BU Division of Systems Engineering Annual Report 2016-2017 by Boston University

B O STO N U N I V E R S I T Y CO L L E G E O F E N G I N E E R I N G DIVISION OF

SYSTEMS ENGINEERING ANNUAL REPORT | 2016â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2017 www.bu.edu/se

CONTENTS 1 HIGHLIGHTS 1

Message from the Division Head

15 GRADUATE PROGRAMS

16 Graduate Program Population

2 At a Glance

17 Graduate Student Funding

4 Faculty Promotion

18 Degrees Awarded

4 New Appointed Faculty

20 Recruitment

4 New Postdoctoral Associates

20 Curriculum Development

5 Selected Faculty Honors and Awards

21 Graduate Student Accomplishments

5 Highlighted New Grants

21 Graduate Student Events

9 FACULTY & STAFF

23 RESEARCH

9 Appointed Faculty

24 Research Highlights

11 Affiliated Faculty

30 Research Laboratories

13 Division Administration

33 The Center for Information and Systems Engineering (CISE)

13 Graduate Committee 13 CISE Administration

13 Postdoctoral Associates

38 CISE Seminars: Co-Sponsored with the Division of Systems Engineering

40 Visiting Committee Members

HIGHLIGHTS MESSAGE FROM THE DIVISION HEAD It is a great pleasure to preface the 2016-17 Division of Systems Engineering Annual Report. The report contains information on new research projects, PhD dissertations completed, and the scholarly output, distinctions and honors Christos G. Cassandras Division Head received by our faculty and graduate students. Our key mission, in partnership with the Center for Information and Systems Engineering (CISE), is to support world-class interdisciplinary research activities in our primary concentration areas: Automation, Robotics and Control; Communications and Networking; Computational Biology; Information Sciences; and Production, Service and Energy Systems. With the addition of two new faculty members, Electrical and Computer Engineering Assistant Professors Alex Olshevsky and Brian Kulis, the Division has grown to 16 faculty members with home Departments in Electrical and Computer Engineering and in Mechanical Engineering, along with 15 affiliated faculty members from the College of Engineering, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Questrom School of Business, and the Medical School. Our PhD student enrollment has slightly increased to 34 students, along with 23 students in the MS and MEng programs. The MS program is targeted for some growth, partly as a result of the agreement signed by the Presidents of BU and Tsinghua University in May 2016 through which select undergraduate students from the Department

Boston University Division of Systems Engineering Annual Report, 2016â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2017

of Automation at Tsinghua University will be able to earn a MS degree in Systems Engineering from BU. There were 4 PhD degrees awarded last year, along with 6 MS degrees and 2 MEng degrees. The Division continues to provide full financial support for all admitted PhD students through Fellowships, while our continuing PhD students remain funded from research grants received by participating and affiliated faculty with a total sponsor commitment of approximately $58M, of which about $20M came from newly awarded grants. The report contains short descriptions of some of these grants. This past year, the Division also launched a new Postdoctoral Associate program supporting three international researchers who have joined faculty activities in the areas of machine learning, control and optimization of multi-agent systems, and power systems (see related section in the report). As we transition into the 2017-18 academic year, I would like to once again gratefully acknowledge the contributions of all Division faculty and students who, along with our outstanding staff, continue to pursue the Divisionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s research and educational missions.

Christos G. Cassandras Division Head

AT A GLANCE NUMBER OF STUDENTS ENROLLED

NUMBER OF FACULTY PUBLICATIONS

NUMBER OF DEGREES AWARDED

PhD: 34 MS: 18 MEng: 5 Minor: 1

Books: 4 Book Chapters: 5 Journals (refereed): 102 Proceedings (refereed): 92 Invited Lectures: 96 Abstracts: 6 Patents: 1

PhD: 4 MS: 6 MEng: 2 Minor: 1

2016-2017

RESEARCH FUNDING 90 80

79.3

60.3

57.7

54.5

49.1 45.3

43.9

43.6

40.6

38.4 28.5

27.8 18.4

15.8 9.9

(in millions)

Continuing Funding (in millions)

17 -2 0 16 20

-2 0

15 20

New Funding

-2 0

13 12 -2 0 20

12 -2 0 11 20

-2 0

10 -2 0 09 20

-2 0 08 20

5.2

19.3

14.1

12.1

-2 0

23.2

29.2

60.9

55.2

68.6

66.3

Total Funding (in millions)

GRADUATE STUDENT POPULATION 70 60

2 1

40 1 6

10 10

14 14

1 5

PhD

MEng

BS/MS

20 29

UG Minor

17 -2 0 20

-2 0

15 14

-2 0

14 13 20

11 20

-2 0

13 12 -2 0

12 -2 0

-2 0 20

-2 0 08 20

DEGREES AWARDED 14

14 13 12 11

PhD

8 7

5 5

MEng

5 4

4 3

3 2

MS with Engineering Practice

UG Minor

3 2

Boston University Division of Systems Engineering Annual Report, 2016â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2017

17 -2 0 16 20

-2 0

15 -2 0 14 20

14 -2 0 13 20

13 12 -2 0 20

12 -2 0 11

10 20

-2 0

10 -2 0 09 20

-2 0

FACULTY PROMOTION PRAKASH ISHWAR (ECE, SE) was promoted to Full Professor in February 2017. His expertise is in information theory, information-theoretic security, machine learning, statistical signal processing, and visual information analysis. A past NSF CAREER Award recipient, he has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles (three of which won an award), received numerous grants, served as the Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing for two terms, and served as an elected member of the IEEE Signal Processing Theory and Methods Technical Committee and the IEEE Image, Video, and Multidimensional Signal Processing Technical Committee. Prakash Ishwar

NEW APPOINTED FACULTY ASSISTANT PROFESSOR ALEXANDER OLSHEVSKY (ECE, SE) focuses his research on control theory and optimization, algorithms for multi-agent systems, sensor networks, distributed optimization and control of large-scale systems. He received a PhD degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2010. Alexander Olshevsky He was a postdoctoral scholar in the Mechanical and Aerospace Department at Princeton University and has also worked as an assistant professor in the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR BRIAN KULIS (ECE, SE) focuses his research on machine learning, statistics, and large-scale data analysis. He received a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin in 2008. He was a postdoctoral scholar in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department Brian Kulis at the University of California, Berkeley, and an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and the Department of Statistics at Ohio State University.

NEW POSTDOCTORAL ASSOCIATES PANAGIOTIS ANDRIANESIS’ (SE) research lies at the interface of engineering and economics in power system economics, market design and analysis, and applied mathematics, with a recent focus on mechanism design for electricity markets with non-convexities. He received his PhD from the University of Thessaly, Greece, in 2016.

YAO MA’S (SE) research includes machine learning, reinforcement learning, and online learning. She is currently working on theoretical analysis of online Markov decision process algorithms. She received her PhD from Tokyo Institute of Technology in 2015. Yao Ma

Panagiotis Andrianesis

XIANGYU MENG’S (SE) research includes smart cities and buildings, event-driven control and optimization, reset control, and distributed algorithms. He received his PhD from the University of Alberta in 2014.

Xiangyu Meng

SELECTED FACULTY HONORS AND AWARDS JOHN BAILLIEUL

IOANNIS PASCHALIDIS

• IEEE Control Systems Society Distinguished Lecture delivered October 25, 2016 to the Philadelphia Section of the Control Systems Society, at Villanova University

• ICRA Best Paper Finalist Award: Cooperative Multi-Quadrotor Pursuit of an Evader in an Environment with No-Fly Zones (with Alyssa Pierson, Armin Ataei, and Mac Schwager), Proceedings IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), May 16-21, 2016, Stockholm, Sweden

CALIN BELTA • IEEE Fellow Class of 2017 for contributions to automated control synthesis and robot motion planning and control • Featured in People in Control, IEEE Control Systems Magazine, April 2017

AZER BESTAVROS • Selected as ACM CS Committee Member for the Heidelberg Laureate Forum • Selected as only academic member of the Cloud Computing Caucus

CHRISTOS CASSANDRAS • Plenary Speaker: 55th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, December 2016

ERIC KOLACZYK • Elected a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematics Statistics (IMS) • Co-chair, National Academy of Science round-table on postsecondary data science education

ABRAHAM MATTA • Director of Hariri’s Cyberinfrastructure Research & Innovation Labs

• Supervised student, Theodora Brisimi, who won 3rd prize and the Crowd Sourcing Prize for the project: Healthcare Analytics: Predicting Hospitalizations Based on Electronic Health Records, IEEE Computer Society 70th Anniversary Student Challenge, May 2016

DAVID STAROBINSKI • 2016 Best Paper Award: Cascading DoS Attacks on Wi-Fi Networks, (with Liangxiao Xin and Guevara Noubir), IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security

ARI TRACHTENBERG • One of four faculty chosen internationally to serve as a Distinguished Scientist Visitor with the faculty of natural sciences at Ben Gurion University

SANDOR VAJDA • MIRA (Maximizing Investigator Research Accomplishment) award from NIH which supports lab general research rather than specific projects and provides 5 years of funding.

HIGHLIGHTED NEW GRANTS AN INTERNET OF CARS – CASSANDRAS NETS GRANT TO DEVELOP SMART CAR TECHNOLOGY By Sara Cody Drivers who commute in and out of Boston — deemed as one of the worst U.S. cities for traffic — have all experienced the misery of rush hour. Now, PROFESSOR CHRISTOS CASSANDRAS (ECE, SE) is part of a research group aiming to ease commuting, and the resulting air pollution, by developing efficient, smart vehicle technology under a $3.36 million grant from the Energy Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy NEXTCAR program. “Right now, the car’s awareness of its surrounding relies completely on the eyes and ears of the driver operating it,” says Cassandras. “But when you look at the data, humans are terrible drivers. Humans get distracted, they get tired, they can’t react as quickly to sudden or multiple simultaneous changes. But computers thrive in an environment like that, so what we want to do is create a technology that allows the car that can access information about its environment on its own, process it and act accordingly, and communicate it to other

Boston University Division of Systems Engineering Annual Report, 2016–2017

Working in the Robotics Laboratory, Cassandras and his team use mobile robots to run a live simulation of smart vehicle technology by projecting a city grid on the floor. The robots respond to traffic lights (the red and green dots) and each other when moving through intersections. Photo provided by CODES Laboratory

vehicles and infrastructure. Essentially, we want to create an internet of cars.”

well. This project seeks to shift this paradigm to one where travelers cooperate with each other instead of compete with each other.

Working with researchers at the University of Michigan and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Bosch as a corporate partner, the goal of the project is to design a control technology that enables a plug-in hybrid car to communicate with other cars and city infrastructure and act on that information. By providing cars with situational self-awareness, they will be able to efficiently calculate the best possible route, accelerate and decelerate as needed and manage their powertrain. The idea, says Cassandras, is to improve the efficiency of vehicles to the point where you can drive from point A to point B without stopping, which would have transformative positive effects.

“It’s hard not to behave selfishly when driving when we are all competing for the same space or to make the same green light, or to pass each other so we can reach our destinations faster. When you think of it, it’s total anarchy,” says Cassandras. “The price of this anarchy can be measured with the difference of this selfish traffic control versus social-optimal traffic control, and the only way to really achieve better social-optimal control is to remove the person from the equation and let the car make these decisions as long as safety is always guaranteed.”

“You can reduce fuel and energy consumption, which benefits the environment and lessens our dependence on expensive energy sources and you make the traffic system work more efficiently by reducing congestion,” says Cassandras. “The government would be satisfied if we could increase these efficiencies by 20 percent.” Currently, obstacles like stoplights, heavy volume, and poorly designed infrastructure that causes bottlenecking contribute to heavy traffic. The constant stopping and starting not only wastes energy, but also expels the most harmful emissions into the atmosphere. On top of environmental effects, there is a human element to snarled traffic as

The project—Ultimately Transformed and Optimized Powertrain Integrated with Automated and Novel Vehicular and Highway Connectivity Leveraged for Efficiency, or UTOPIAN VEHICLE — has several parts. Cassandras will helm several phases of the project, including one that focuses on the eco-routing algorithms to help establish the connection between vehicles, infrastructure and the environment. Other partners will work on the cars themselves. On the spectrum of automobile autonomy, this project will generate a car that performs some functions automatically but will still require human input, which may help ease the public with the transition towards smart cars.

GETTING POWER TO THE PEOPLE: PROFESSOR CARAMANIS AWARDED SLOAN FOUNDATION GRANT TO IMPROVE ELECTRICITY DISTRIBUTION NETWORKS By Michael Seele While the use of clean, renewable energy is rising nationally, its growth is being restrained by an imbalance between the consumption and generation of power. Wind and solar power are clean and cheap, but their availability varies widely depending on location, season and time of day. Fossil-fuel generated power is available anytime, but is expensive and carbon-intensive. Utility companies average out the cost difference and charge consumers accordingly, leaving little economic incentive for consumers to adapt to cost differences and increase the use of renewable sources. PROFESSOR MICHAEL CARAMANIS (ME, SE) is working to change that by developing algorithms that will enable consumers to choose when and how they use electricity. Recognizing the potential of this approach, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has awarded Caramanis a $420,000 grant to pursue it. “In a distribution network today, you pay an average price whether you consume in the morning or at night, on a hot or cold day, and regardless of the location of the grid that you are connected to,” said Caramanis. “This practice results in an electric power system that operates very inefficiently and provides perverse incentives for inefficient investments by all parties involved.” Caramanis is developing algorithms that take a number of generation and usage factors into account and derive dynamic prices. Smartphone apps that incorporate these algorithms could enable users to take advantage of the emerging Internet of Things and pursue their preferences at the lowest cost or highest benefit.

“Knowing how electricity prices will change over time and in particular their locational granularity, will be very important information to consumers,” Caramanis added. “For example, in midday, prices are high in commercial areas but low in residential areas where everyone is away at work; the opposite trend is true in the evening. We want to empower the consumers by giving them information and financial incentives to do the right thing.” Consumers might, for instance, specify when they expect to plug in electric vehicles to charging outlets and when they expect to depart. The consumer’s smartphone would then monitor the cost of electricity at that charger’s location and implement a charging schedule that takes advantage of low-cost times and avoids high-cost times. Using price information sharing, a smart thermostat might precool or preheat a suburban home and a grid-friendly dishwasher could be run at a time of day when electricity prices are low. Micro-generators could even be used to provide reserves. Such usage would allow utilities to optimize their distribution networks, reducing their costs and allowing them to pass along savings to consumers. It would also facilitate more efficient use of solar and wind power, much of which is underutilized in the current system. Taken together, Caramanis believes his proposed dynamic price discovery and sharing market will contribute to lower energy costs and increased adoption of clean, renewable energy sources. Caramanis and his research group have already conducted computer simulations that demonstrate the potential for significant benefits

Professor Michael Caramanis (ME, SE)

of optimal spatiotemporal electricity pricing. The Sloan Foundation grant will facilitate pilot studies using actual networks to evaluate the impact of spatiotemporal pricing, and Caramanis expects the results to boost confidence in the technology. A wide range of utilities, including National Grid, have expressed strong interest in participating. “Building confidence is the key prerequisite to establishing a new market. Although we have already simulated benefits in computer

studies, demonstrating bilateral benefits for utilities companies and consumers in actual pilot studies can provide invaluable momentum,” said Caramanis. “The Sloan Foundation grant will allow us to verify these benefits for key participating stakeholders including distribution companies, practitioners, regulators and consumer advocates. Should applicability and societal benefits be documented, barriers to the adoption of efficient distribution markets will have been significantly overcome.”

PROFESSORS LITTLE, FABIAN AND ADAMKIEWICZ RECEIVE 2016 EARLY STAGE URBAN RESEARCH AWARD Each year, the Initiative on Cities provides seed funding for Boston University faculty and student-led research projects focused on issues effecting cities. This year, Research Assistant Professor Patricia Fabian, BU School of Public Health, PROFESSOR THOMAS LITTLE (ECE, SE), BU College of Engineering, and Professor Gary Adamkiewicz, Harvard Chan School of Public Health received one of the 2016 Early Stage Urban Research Awards for their proposal titled: Urban Indoor Air Quality and Urban Indoor Air Monitor - Assessment of Urban Indoor Air Quality, Environmental Conditions and Occupancy Using a New Low-Cost Wireless Sensor. This pilot will be part of an ongoing study, conducted by the Center for Research on Environmental and Social Stressors in Housing across the

Boston University Division of Systems Engineering Annual Report, 2016–2017

Life Course (CRESSH), related to environmental health disparities in low income populations throughout Massachusetts. Fabian, Little and Adamkiewicz will build and test a compact low-cost indoor air quality and occupancy sensing device (Urban Indoor Air Monitor) in a sample of homes, and compare measurements produced by the device to those obtained via other data collection methods. If effective, it will reduce indoor air quality and environmental monitoring costs by a factor of ten, when compared to current off the shelf technology. The data collected from this experiment will help inform current and future research, interventions and design intended to reduce health disparities related to indoor environmental air quality.

Faculty & Staff APPOINTED FACULTY SEAN ANDERSSON

MICHAEL CARAMANIS

Associate Professor, ME Robotics, control theory, scanning probe microscopy, symbolic-based control • PhD, University of Maryland, 2003 • Kern Fellow, Boston University, 2012, 2013 • Associate Editor, SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization • NSF CAREER Award, 2009

Professor, ME Mathematical programming, control and stochastic systems • PhD, Harvard University, 1976 • BU College of Engineering Service Award, 2004 • Editor, IIE Transactions in Design and Manufacturing, 1997–2000 • Member, IIE Transactions in Design and Manufacturing Editorial Board

JOHN BAILLIEUL Distinguished Professor of Engineering, ME, ECE Robotics, control of mechanical systems, mathematical system theory, information-based control theory • PhD, Harvard University, 1975 • The Dayawansa Memorial Lectures, 2014 • The Zaborsky Lectures, 2013 • IEEE Hendrik W. Bode Lecture Prize, 2011 • Fellow of IEEE, Fellow of IFAC, Fellow of SIAM • Inaugural Distinguished Lecturer Series Award, College of Engineering, Boston University, 2008 • IEEE Third Millennium Medal, 2000 • Past President, IEEE Control Systems Society • Past Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control

CALIN BELTA Professor, ME, ECE, Bioinformatics ; Director, BU Robotics Laboratory Verification and control of dynamical systems, hybrid systems, symbolic control, robot motion planning and control, gene and metabolic networks • PhD, University of Pennsylvania, 2003 • Tegan Family Distinguished Faculty Fellow, 2016 • Associate Editor, SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization • AFOSR Young Investigator Award, 2008 • NSF CAREER Award, 2005 • Fulbright Scholar Award, 1997

Boston University Division of Systems Engineering Annual Report, 2016–2017

CHRISTOS CASSANDRAS Distinguished Professor of Engineering, ECE; Division Head, SE Discrete event and hybrid systems, stochastic optimization, simulation, manufacturing systems, communication and sensor networks, multi-agent systems • PhD, Harvard University, 1982 • Engineering Distinguished Scholar Award, Boston University 2014 • Past President, IEEE Control Systems Society, 2012 • Kern Fellow, Boston University, 2012 • IEEE Control Systems Technology Award, 2011 • IBM/IEEE Smarter Planet Challenge prize, 2011 and 2014 • Fellow of IEEE, Fellow of IFAC • IEEE Distinguished Lecturer, 2001–2004 • Past Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control • Lilly Fellow, 1991 • IEEE Control Systems Society Distinguished Member Award • Harold Chestnut Prize, 1999 • Department Editor, Journal of Discrete Event Dynamic Systems • Editor, Automatica • Past Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control • Honorary Professor, Huazhong University of Science and Technology and Wuhan University of Science and Technology • Chair Professor, Tsinghua University

DAVID CASTAÑÓN Professor, ECE; Associate Director, CenSSIS Stochastic control, estimation optimization, image understanding and parallel computation • PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1976 • Past President, IEEE Control Systems Society • IEEE Control Systems Society Distinguished Member Award • Past Air Force Scientific Advisory Board member • ECE Teaching Award 2007 • Associate Editor, Computational Optimization and Applications

PRAKASH ISHWAR Professor, ECE Statistical signal processing, machine learning, information theory, secure multiparty computation, visual information processing and analysis • PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2002 • Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, 2012-2014 • Best Paper Award, with Kai Guo and Janusz Konrad, at the 7th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Video and Signal-Based Surveillance (AVSS) in September, 2010 • NSF CAREER Award, 2005

JAMES PERKINS Associate Professor, ME Real-time scheduling and control of manufacturing systems, supply chain management, resource pricing and congestion control in communications networks • PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1993 • Department of Manufacturing Engineering Excellence in Teaching Award, 2002–2004

VENKATESH SALIGRAMA

Assistant Professor, ECE Machine learning, statistics, large-scale data analysis • PhD, University of Texas at Austin, 2008 • Peter J. Levine Career Development Professorship, 2015 • NSF CAREER Award, 2015

Professor, ECE Machine learning, computer vision, information theory, and statistical signal processing • PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1997 • NSF CAREER Award, 2005 • Presidential Early Career Award, 2003 • ONR Young Investigator Award, 2002 • Outstanding Achievement Award from United Technologies, 1997

ALEXANDER OLSHEVSKY

DAVID STAROBINSKI

Assistant Professor, ECE Control and algorithms for multi-agent systems, sensor networks, distributed optimization, control of large-scale systems • PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2010 • AFOSR Young Investigator Award 2015 • NSF CAREER Award 2014 • INFORMS Computing Society Best Paper Prize 2012 • SIAM SIGEST Selection

Professor, ECE Wireless and vehicular networks; QOS and traffic engineering; network economics; cyber security • PhD, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Israel, 1999 • Associate Editor, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, 2009-2014 • ECE Faculty Teaching Award, 2010 • Department of Energy Early Career Award, 2004 • NSF CAREER Award, 2002

IOANNIS PASCHALIDIS

ROBERTO TRON

Professor, ECE, BME; Director, CISE Systems and control, networking, applied probability, optimization, operations research, computational biology, medical informatics, and bioinformatics. • PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1996 • Fellow of IEEE

Assistant Professor, ME Intersection of automatic control, robotics and computer vision, with a particular emphasis on applications of Riemannian geometry and on distributed problems involving teams of multiple agents • PhD, Johns Hopkins University, 2012

BRIAN KULIS

• Inaugural Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems • Distinguished Faculty Fellow, College of Engineering, Boston University, 2011–2016 • IBM/IEEE Smarter Planet Challenge prize, IEEE Computer Society Crowd Sourcing Prize and 70th Anniversary Student Challenge • Best paper awards: INFORMS George E. Nicholson, Intl. Symposium of Modeling and Optimization in Mobile, Ad Hoc, and Wireless Networks (WiOpt), IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) • Invited participant, National Academies U.S. Frontiers of Engineering Symposium and Keck Futures Initiative (NAKFI) conference • NSF CAREER Award

PIROOZ VAKILI Associate Professor, ME Monte Carlo simulation, optimization, computational biology, computational finance • PhD, Harvard University, 1989

HUA WANG Associate Professor, ME; Associate Division Head, SE Control of nonlinear phenomena, intelligent systems and control, complex networks, cooperative control, robotics, and applications in biological, energy and aerospace systems • PhD, University of Maryland at College Park, 1993

• Best Paper Award, 2013 IEEE International Conference on Control System, Computing and Engineering, Penang, Malaysia, 2013 • College of Engineering Faculty Service Award, Boston University, 2012 • Cheung Kong Scholar, Ministry of Education, China and Li Ka Shing Foundation, Hong Kong, China, 2000 • IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems Outstanding Paper Award, 2000 • IFAC Congress Best Poster Paper Prize of the Fourteenth Triennial World Congress of International Federation of Automatic Control, 1999 • O. Hugo Schuck Best Paper Award of the American Automatic Control Council, 1994

AFFILIATED FACULTY AZER BESTAVROS Professor, Computer Science; Director, Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science and Engineering Scalable Internet protocols and systems, application of game theory to the design of systems and networks, resource colocation and management for cloud computing, virtualization and programming support for cyber physical systems, compositional analysis and verification of complex systems

PIERRE DUPONT Adjunct Professor, ME, BME Robotic and imaging technology for minimally invasive surgery • PhD, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1988 • Best Paper Award at the IEEE/RSJ Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2014 • Best Medical Robotics Paper Award at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2012

• PhD, Harvard University, 1992

MICHAEL GEVELBER

• Distinguished Service Award, IEEE and the ACM

Associate Professor, ME, MSE Development of control and sensing systems for electrospinning of nanofibers, plasma spray, ebeam deposition, crystal growth, CVD, and intelligent building HVAC systems • PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1988 • Kern Faculty Fellow, Boston University, 2012

• United Methodist Scholar/Teacher Award for 2010/2011 • Google Faculty Research Award (with Evimaria Terzi), 2011 • Chair, IEEE Technical Committee on the Internet, 2007–2013 • Distinguished Speaker, IEEE Computer Society, 2010

MARK CROVELLA Professor, Computer Science Performance evaluation, focused on parallel and networked computer systems, detecting and understanding anomalies in IP networks, efficient network monitoring, network security • PhD, University of Rochester, 1994 • Boston University Innovator of the Year, 2014 • IETF/IRTF Applied Networking Research Prize, 2013 • Past editor for Computer Communication Review, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, Computer Networks and IEEE Transactions on Computers • Fellow of the ACM and IEEE • ACM SIGMETRICS Test of Time Award

Boston University Division of Systems Engineering Annual Report, 2016–2017

W. CLEM KARL Professor and Chair, ECE Professor, BME Computational imaging, detection and estimation, inverse problems, biomedical signal and image processing • PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1991 • Fellow of IEEE • General Chair, 2017 IEEE International Conference on Computational Imaging • IEEE Publications Services and Products Board, 2017-present • IEEE Publications Services and Products Board Strategic Planning Committee, 2015-present • Inaugural Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Computational Imaging, 2014 • Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, 2013 • IEEE Signal Processing Society Publication Board, 2013-present • ECE Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2000 11

ERIC KOLACZYK Professor, Mathematics and Statistics Statistical modeling of instrumental data in temporal, spatial, and network-indexed contexts • PhD, Stanford University, 1994 • Fellow of American Statistical Association • Elected Member of the International Statistical Institute • Elected Fellow of the Institute of Mathematics Statistics

LEV LEVITIN Distinguished Professor, ECE Information theory, physics of communication and computing, complex and organized systems, quantum theory of measurement, reliable communication and computing, bioinformatics • PhD, USSR Academy of Sciences, Gorky University, 1969 • Best Technical Paper Award at the Opnetwork conference, 2013 • Life Fellow, IEEE • Member, International Academy of Informatization

THOMAS LITTLE Professor, ECE; Associate Dean of Educational Initiatives, College of Engineering; Associate Director, NSF Smart Lighting ERC Computer networking (wireless, vehicular, opportunistic, delay tolerant), mobile computing, distributed systems, multimedia streaming and storage, video on demand, visible light communications • PhD, Syracuse University, 1991 • Editorial Board Member, Journal of Multimedia Tools and Applications • Kern Fellow, Boston University, 2010 • BU College of Engineering Faculty Service Award, 2009 • Mass eComm 10 Award, 2001 • NSF Research Initiation Award, 1991 • NSF CAREER Award, 1995

ABRAHAM MATTA Professor, Computer Science Transport and routing protocols for the Internet and wireless networks, feedback-based control design and analysis, architectures for protocol design and large-scale traffic management, modeling and performance evaluation • PhD, University of Maryland at College Park, 1995 • Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing • Director of Hariri’s Cyberinfrastructure Research & Innovations Lab

BOBAK NAZER Assistant Professor, ECE Information theory and communications, reliable computation over networks, distributed signal processing • PhD, University of California, Berkeley, 2009 12

• NSF CAREER Award, 2013-2018 • Joint Paper Award from IEEE Communications Society and IEEE Information Theory Society, (with Professor Michael Gastpar) • Eli Jury Award, EECS Department, University of California Berkeley, 2009

EROL PEKÖZ Professor, Operations & Technology Management Applied probability and statistics, rare events, Stein’s method queuing theory and statistical methods for health care data • PhD, University of California Berkeley, 1995

NATHAN PHILLIPS Professor, Earth & Environment Physiological mechanisms and processes by which plants and ecosystems regulate water loss and carbon gain, and how such processes may be altered under global environmental change • PhD, Duke University, 1997

AVRUM SPIRA Professor of Medicine, Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, and Bioinformatics Alexander Graham Bell Professor of Healthcare Entrepreneurship Chief, Division of Computational Biomedicine, Boston University School of Medicine Director, Translational Bioinformatics Program, Clinical and Translational Science Institute Lung cancer and COPD genomics, smoking and airway gene expression, bioinformatics • MD, McGill University, 1996

ARI TRACHTENBERG Professor, ECE Cyber security, algorithms, error-correcting codes • PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2000 • ECE Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2013 • Kern Faculty Fellow, Boston University, 2012 • ECE Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2003 • NSF CAREER Award, 2002

SANDOR VAJDA Professor, BME, Chemistry; Director, Biomolecular Engineering Research Center Scientific computing, primarily optimization, computational chemistry and biology, including protein and peptide structure determination, protein engineering, and drug design • PhD, Hungarian Academy of Science (Hungary), 1983 • Elected to American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering College of Fellows • Editorial Manager, Proteins: Structure, Function and Bioinformatics

DIVISION ADMINISTRATION CHRISTOS G. CASSANDRAS

GRADUATE COMMITTEE HUA WANG Chair

IOANNIS PASCHALIDIS

SEAN ANDERSSON

CHRISTINA POLYZOS

Division Head

HUA WANG Associate Head

CISE ADMINISTRATION Director

Associate Director

RUTH MASON

CALIN BELTA

Division Director

ELIZABETH FLAGG, ED.M.

Programs Manager

ALEX OLSHEVSKY

Graduate Programs Manager

CHERYL STEWART

DENISE JOSEPH

ROBERTO TRON

Communications Manager

POSTDOCTORAL ASSOCIATES PANAGIOTIS ANDRIANESIS PhD, University of Thessaly, Greece, 2016

ELIZABETH FLAGG, ED.M.

YAO MA PhD, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 2015

XIANGYU MENG PhD, University of Alberta, 2014

Boston University Division of Systems Engineering Annual Report, 2016â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2017

Graduate Programs THE DIVISION OF SYSTEMS ENGINEERING (SE) offers a unique interdisciplinary graduate program with select faculty from the College of Engineering departments of Biomedical Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering; the College of Arts and Sciences departments of Computer Science, Earth & Environment, and Mathematics & Statistics; and the Questrom School of Business. SE offers PhD, MS and MEng, MS and MEng with Practice degrees and newly introduced masters degree specializations to graduate students (as well as an Undergraduate Minor to undergraduate students) with interests in information, decision, and control sciences, and in all application areas encompassing the modeling, analysis, simulation, control, optimization, and management of complex systems. The Division offers research opportunities through the Center for Information and Systems Engineering (CISE). Please see the Research section for more on CISE. Research activities focus on: automation, robotics and control; communications and networking; computational biology; information sciences; and production, service and energy systems. Systems Engineering cuts across the traditional engineering departments as a discipline that enables building, analyzing, and managing a system, be it electrical, mechanical, chemical, biological, or one involving business processes and logistics. Our graduates are equipped with the unique skills to adapt their knowledge and expertise to different application domains with this flexibility placing them in high demand.

Boston University Division of Systems Engineering Annual Report, 2016–2017

GRADUATE PROGRAM POPULATION TABLE 1: GRADUATE STUDENT ENROLLMENT 2016-2017 DOMESTIC

INTERNATIONAL

TOTAL

Female

Male

Female

Male

PhD

MEng

TOTALS

TABLE 2: STUDENT POPULATION 2008-2017 70 60

2 1

40 1 6

10 10

MEng

BS/MS

20 29

UG Minor

17 -2 0 16 20

-2 0

15 -2 0 14 20

14 -2 0 13 20

13 12 -2 0 20

12 -2 0 11

10 20

-2 0

10 -2 0 09 20

-2 0

14 14

1 5

PhD

GRADUATE STUDENT FUNDING TABLE 3: GRADUATE STUDENT FUNDING 2016-2017 PhD

FUNDING SOURCE

MEng

Total

Research Assistants

Systems Fellows

Dean's Fellows

Independent or Company

Tuition Scholarship

TOTALS

18 5

TABLE 4: RESEARCH ASSISTANT FUNDING BY AGENCY 2016-2017

8.5

NSF 7.5

Internal Source 4

Subcontracts 2

Industry ONR

NIH

ARO

DHS

0.5

AFOSR

0.5

Students Supported

Boston University Division of Systems Engineering Annual Report, 2016â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2017

DEGREES AWARDED TABLE 5: DEGREES AWARDED 2008-2017 14

14 13 12 11

PhD

8 7

5 5

MEng

5 4

4 3

3 2

17 -2 0 16 20

-2 0

15 -2 0 14 20

14 -2 0 13 20

13 12 -2 0 20

12 -2 0 11

10 20

-2 0

10 -2 0 09 20

-2 0

71 . . . . . . . . . . . . Number of PhD degrees awarded since 2001 in Systems Engineering 48 . . . . . . . . . . Number of PhD degrees awarded since Division established in 2008 4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Number of PhD degrees awarded this year (Table 6) 41. . . . . . . . . . . . Number of MS degrees awarded since Division established in 2008 6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Number of MS degrees awarded this year (Table 7) 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Number of MS with Engineering Practice degrees awarded since program offered Fall 2014 40. . . . . . . . . . MEng degrees awarded since program offered in Fall 2011 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Number of MEng degrees awarded this year (Table 8) 10. . . . . . . . . . . SE Minor degrees awarded since program offered in Fall 2012 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Number of SE Minor degrees awarded this year (Table 9)

MS with Engineering Practice

UG Minor

TABLE 6: PHD DEGREES AWARDED LAST NAME

FIRST NAME

ADVISOR

DISSERTATION TITLE

Chen

Yuting

Saligrama

Similarity Learning for Person Re-Identification and Semantic Video Retrieval

Ntakou

Elli

Caramanis

Distribution Power Markets: Detailed Modeling and Tractable Algorithms

Pourazarm

Sepideh

Cassandras

Control and Optimization Approaches for Energy- Limited Systems: Applications to Wireless Sensor Networks and Battery-Powered Vehicles

Simhon

Eran

Starobinski

Advance Reservations and Information Sharing In Queues with Strategic Customers

TABLE 7: MS DEGREES AWARDED LAST NAME

FIRST NAME

ADVISOR

Han

Shuai

Paschalidis

Kutzko

Ryan

Wang

Sun

Xinmiao

Cassandras

Juntao

Cassandras

Turkoglu

Aykut

Pekoz

Yun

Yang

Wang

THESIS

Analysis of Parabolic Trough Collector Cleaning System Under Adaptive Scheduling Policy

TABLE 8: MENG DEGREES AWARDED LAST NAME

FIRST NAME

ADVISOR

Abbaszadeh Tavassoli

Ramin

Perkins

Keyi

Vakili

TABLE 9: SE MINOR AWARDED LAST NAME

FIRST NAME

ADVISOR

Beaulieu

Samuel

Moreshet

Boston University Division of Systems Engineering Annual Report, 2016â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2017

RECRUITMENT TABLE 10: ADMISSIONS RESULTS FOR 2016-2017 INTERNATIONAL

Female

Male

Totals

MEng

LEAP

PhD

Totals

MEng

LEAP

PhD

Totals

MEng

LEAP

PhD

Totals

DOMESTIC Male

MEng

LEAP

PhD

124

224

Totals

119

212

MEng

LEAP

PhD

Totals

103

MEng

LEAP

PhD

Totals

CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT • EC 504 Advanced Data Structures added to Electives • ME 518 Product Quality added to Production and Service Systems Concentration • ME 533 Energy Conversion added to Energy Concentration • CAS CS 542 Machine Learning added to Electives • EC 601 Product Design in ECE added to Electives

INTERNATIONAL

Female APPLICANTS

Female

Degree

ADMISSIONS

DOMESTIC

MATRICULANTS

ADMISSIONS

APPLICANTS

Degree

TABLE 11: ADMISSIONS PROJECTIONS FOR FALL 2017

Female

Male

Totals

1 3

GRADUATE STUDENT ACCOMPLISHMENTS LAST NAME

FIRST NAME

ADVISOR

HONOR/AWARD

Haghighi

Iman

Belta

SE Travel Award, presenter, IEEE Conference on Decision and Control 2016, Las Vegas

Lin

Christy

Ishwar

SE Travel Award, first author and presenter, IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP 2017)

Luo

Yufan

Andersson

SE Travel Award, presenter, IEEE Conference on Decision and Control 2016, Las Vegas

Pourazarm

Sepideh

Cassandras

ENG Societal Impact Dissertation Award and SE Outstanding Dissertation of the Year Award: Control and Optimization Approaches for Energy-Limited Systems: Applications to Wireless Sensor Networks and Battery-Powered Vehicles

Turkoglu

Aykut

Pekoz, Mazumder

Admitted to BU Questrom School of Business, Doctoral Fellowship, Fall 2017

Wang

Shuai

Chin

SE Travel Award, presenter, IEEE Conference on Decision and Control 2016, Las Vegas

Xin

Liangxiao

Starobinski

Best Paper Award, IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (IEEE CNS 2016)

Tingting

Paschalidis

SE Travel Award, presenter, IEEE Conference on Decision and Control 2016, Las Vegas

Zhang

Jing

Paschalidis

SE Travel Award, presenter, IEEE Conference on Decision and Control 2016, Las Vegas BARI Research Seed Grant awarded for the project Detecting Non-Typical Traffic Jams Using Waze Data, Boston Area Research Initiative Second Place (New England area), Net Impact & Toyota Next Generation Mobility Challenge

Zhang

Yue

Cassandras

SE Travel Award, presenter, 2017 American Control Conference, Seattle

Zhou

Nan

Cassandras

SE Travel Award, presenter, IEEE Conference on Decision and Control 2016, Las Vegas

GRADUATE STUDENT EVENTS September 2, ISSO Orientation September 2, Division Orientation September 2, Welcome Lunch, Sichuan Gourmet September 2, ENG Masters Cocktail Reception September 9, CISE Presentation Bootcamp September 16, Systems Graduate Student Social September 28, CISE Industry Roundtable, Yanfeng Geng, Geode Capital Management September 30, ISSO Seminar Lunch & Learn

February 1, CISE Industry Roundtable, John-Nicolas Furst, Akami Technologies February 23, Open House Welcome Dinner February 24, Open House Graduate Student Lunch April 12, CISE Industry Roundtable, Wenbo He, Mathworks April 17, MSE/CISE/ME Industry Roundtable: Ning Duanmu, Amastan Technologies May 5, Annual Cinco de Mayo Graduate Student Lunch & Graduation Celebration

October 31, CISE Halloween Party

All Student Association of Graduate Engineers (SAGE) events (at least 2 monthly)

November 18, Divisions/CISE Thanksgiving BBQ

CISE Seminar Series

December 8, CISE Holiday Brunch

Career Development Office Seminar Sessions and Speaker Series

Boston University Division of Systems Engineering Annual Report, 2016â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2017

RESEARCH The Division brings together faculty from across the University to pursue collaborative research in Systems Engineering. Division faculty hold primary appointments in the College of Engineering (COE) Department of Biomedical Engineering, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Department of Mechanical Engineering; the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) Bioinformatics Program, Department of Computer Science and Department of Mathematics and Statistics; and the Questrom School of Business (QST) Department of Operations and Technology Management. THERE ARE FIVE PRIMARY AREAS OF RESEARCH: • AUTOMATION, ROBOTICS AND CONTROL, which includes teams of autonomous agents, networked control systems, image-guided surgery, control of material processes, and nanoscale systems; • COMMUNICATIONS AND NETWORKING, which includes performance analysis, pricing and resource allocation, communication protocols, cyber-security, visual light communication, and optical, wireless, and sensor networks; • COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY, which includes metabolic and gene networks, systems biology, and protein docking;

Boston University Division of Systems Engineering Annual Report, 2016–2017

• INFORMATION SCIENCES, including signal and image processing, multi-resolution signal modeling, multidimensional detection and estimation, geometricbased modeling and estimation, image encoding/ decoding, and the integration of digital signal processing with signal understanding; and • PRODUCTION, SERVICE AND ENERGY SYSTEMS, which includes energy economics and management, smart grids, production scheduling and planning, logistics, inventory control, supply chain management, financial engineering.

RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS

Computers may consider “computer programmer” a man’s job, relegating women to “receptionist,” BU’s Venkatesh Saligrama and Tolga Bolukbasi discovered. Photo by Cydney Scott

IS YOUR COMPUTER SEXIST? It may say “boss” is a man’s job, BU and Microsoft researchers discover By Rich Barlow, BU Today It had to happen. In an era when the nation’s president has been routinely criticized for his sexist remarks about women, BU researchers, working with Microsoft colleagues, have discovered your computer itself may be sexist. Or rather, they’ve discovered that the biased data we fallible humans feed into computers can lead the machines to regurgitate our bias. And there are potential real-world consequences from that. Those findings are in a paper*** produced by the team, whose two BU members are PROFESSOR VENKATESH SALIGRAMA (ECE, CS, SE) and Tolga Bolukbasi (ENG’18). The team studied word embeddings—algorithms that one member of the team described to National Public Radio as dictionaries for computers. Word embeddings allow computers to make word associations. To take a hypothetical example NPR used, a tech company looking to hire a computer programmer can use an embedding that knows “computer programmer” is related to terms such as “JavaScript” or “artificial intelligence.” A computer program with that word embedding could cull résumés that contain such related words. So far, this is harmless. But word embeddings can recognize word relationships only by studying batches of writing. The researchers particularly focused on word2vec, a publicly accessible embedding nourished on texts from Google News, an aggregator of journalism articles. Turns out that those articles contain gender stereotypes, as the researchers found when they asked the embedding to find analogies similar to “he/she.” 24

The embedding spit back worrisome analogies involving jobs. For “he” occupations, it came up with words like “architect,” “financier,” and “boss,” while “she” jobs included “homemaker,” “nurse,” and “receptionist.” Theoretically, these distinctions could promote real-world inequity. Companies increasingly rely on computer software to analyze job applications. Say that hypothetical tech company seeking a computer programmer used embeddings to weed through résumés. “Word embeddings also rank terms related to computer science closer to male names than female names,” the BU-Microsoft team says in its paper, to be presented at the Neural Information Processing System (NIPS) conference in Barcelona, the top annual meeting on machine learning. “In this hypothetical example, the usage of word embedding makes it even harder for women to be recognized as computer scientists and would contribute to widening the existing gender gap in computer science.” “These are machine learning algorithms that are looking at documents, and whatever bias exists in our everyday world is being carried into these word embeddings,” Saligrama says. “The algorithm itself is pretty agnostic. It doesn’t care whether there exists an underlying bias or no biases in the document itself. It is just picking up on what words co-occur with what other words.” The bias is in the data set being examined, like Google News. “What our paper uncovers is that just because a machine does stuff agnostically doesn’t mean it is going to be unbiased. What machine learning is about is, you look at the world, and then you learn from

the world. The machine is also going to learn biases that exist in the world it observes.” The researchers didn’t just decide on their own which pairings were sexist and which weren’t; they ran each analogy by 10 people using Amazon Mechanical Turk, the crowdsourcing online marketplace. If a majority deemed an analogy sexist, the researchers accepted their judgment. The researchers say that they wrote their own algorithms that maintain appropriate gender-based associations while screening out sexist stereotypes. “It sounds like an ugly problem, because there are many, many, many, many words, and it seems very hard to go individually and remove these biases,” says Saligrama. “But the computer’s ability to make word associations enables it, when fed some biased words, to predict other words that could be similarly sexist,” he says. “So it is able to then remove biases…without a human being performing, word by word, the whole dictionary.”

They will make their algorithms publicly available shortly on the computer code-sharing platform GitHub, Saligrama and Bolukbasi say. The two plan to pursue additional research. They’ve begun to look at racial bias in Google News articles, and they hope to expand their study beyond English. “We’ve thought about how to quantify bias among different languages, when you look at gender or when you look at bias,” says Saligrama. “Do certain languages have more bias versus others? We don’t know the answer to that.” ***Man is to Computer Programmer as Woman is to Homemaker? Debiasing Word Embeddings, Tolga Bolukbasi 1, Kai-Wei Chang 2, James Zou 2, Venkatesh Saligrama 1,2, Adam Kalai 2, Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) Conference Proceedings 1 2

Boston University, 8 St. Mary’s Street, Boston, MA Microsoft Research New England, 1 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA

NSF AND CISE LOOK TO THE FUTURE OF SMART HEALTHCARE AT CAMPUS WORKSHOP By Sara Cody As the National Science Foundation looks to the future of science in smart and connected health, the agency partnered with the Center for Information and Systems Engineering to convene a gathering of principal investigators and other research leaders on the BU campus this month. The interdisciplinary researchers discussed their progress and identified new areas for future research. “The meeting looked at cutting-edge innovations, from smart analytics to bring about personalized health solutions, to devices and algorithms that close the loop and control important physiological variables, and to ways in which we, as humans, can better interface with technology to improve our health,” said PROFESSOR IOANNIS PASCHALIDIS (ECE, BME, SE), who spearheaded the event steering committee along with PROFESSOR CHRISTOS CASSANDRAS (ECE, SE) and Professor William Adams (MED). “It was an honor and a privilege to host this event at Boston University, welcoming many distinguished colleagues, and showcasing the important interdisciplinary work we have been doing in this fascinating arena.” The three-day program interspersed presentations with breakout sessions in which attendees gathered together in smaller groups to discuss new ideas and presented their findings to the entire group. Presentations covered themes in connected healthcare, big data and analysis, harnessing the power of the Internet of Things to personalize healthcare, and the challenges associated with handling privacy and implementation. The first day of the workshop, titled “Visioning,” hosted a forum of more than 60 research leaders.

has spent the last 15 years developing the bionic pancreas. The technology optimizes blood sugar levels by using dosing algorithms to automatically calculate and precisely dispense two hormones every five minutes: insulin when blood sugar levels are high; and glucagon when they are low. “With this disease data changes every day, minute to minute, person to person. It is a day and night disease that requires round the clock care and a lot of impractical cognitive input and the current tools are failing patients,” said Damiano. “The iLetTM learns from your ever-changing glucose needs, making 288 decisions every day, which amounts to once every five minutes, and adjusting the medication as subtly or dramatically as the patient requires.” The Principal Investigator meeting was held on the second day and brought together more than 120 researchers representing more than $150 million NSF investment in smart and connected health. In addition to summarizing the previous day, the meeting featured 84 ignite talks — 90-second research overviews summarizing interesting insights and hopes for the future of smart connected health. “The Smart and Connected Health Visioning and PI meetings were remarkable for their collaborative focus on the future,” said Nilsen. “Participants, supported by the multidisciplinary environment at BU, envisioned future scientific needs through the lens of fundamental and applied sciences to identify the prime potential areas of research.”

“The goal of this workshop is to have brilliant people weigh in about where smart health should go, and the material we gain from that will be pulled together to publish and present to NSF leadership in order to keep moving that needle,” said Wendy Nilsen, director of the NSF’s Smart and Connected Health program. “We are focused on using science to solve problems with societal value and we are calling on this community we built to come together and look to the future.” Professor Edward Damiano (BME) presented the iLetTM bionic pancreas as an example of a smart and connected health system that “closes the loop” by automating the dosing process to treat type 1 diabetes, relieving patients and their caretakers of the burdensome task. Motivated by his infant son David’s diagnosis, Damiano Boston University Division of Systems Engineering Annual Report, 2016–2017

Professor Ioannis Paschalidis (ECE, BME, SE) and Dr. Wendy Nilsen, director of the NSF’s Smart and Connected Health program, address the crowd at the Visioning meeting. Photo by Dave Green

IT TAKES TEAMWORK New Interdisciplinary Research Center Will Focus on Making Diagnostics Smart and Portable By Sara Cody The road to commercializing medical technology is usually long, requiring the work of basic scientists, clinical researchers, engineers and eventually industry partners, with one group passing along knowledge to the next until a marketable version of the technology is finally realized. But what if the work of these groups could be combined, with each working toward a common goal simultaneously? Team science has the potential to make the process more efficient and bring medical innovations to the patient faster. Professor Catherine Klapperich (BME, ME, MSE) hopes that the new Precision Diagnostics Center (PDC) she directs will do just that. She saw the potential that BU’s diverse research portfolio offers and established the new interdisciplinary initiative that will capitalize on the synergy among faculty researchers to invent new medical diagnostic tools. The PDC builds on the success, momentum and infrastructure of the NIH Center for Future Technologies in Cancer Care (CFTCC), which Klapperich also directs at BU and will now fall under the umbrella of the new center. The PDC’s mission will expand to include cancer, and innovations that leverage point-of-care technologies to enable precision medicine across a wider swath of diseases. Researchers from the College of Engineering in collaboration with the BU schools of Medicine, Dental Medicine and Public Health will collaborate in the new center. “This center comprises faculty across many departments of the University, who are working on new ways to collect, measure, and use patient data. We want to take the power of that data and put it into applications that can be patient facing either during an office visit or at home,” said Klapperich. “After working on building the CFTCC for five years, a common refrain was ‘Can we do this for other health care areas?’ We see the PDC as being one way to bring the engineering innovations we have developed in point-of-care diagnostics to the clinic earlier in the design process. Patient and provider input and acceptance is essential to the success of these technologies.” Point of care diagnostics allow clinicians, pharmacists and even patients themselves to conduct sophisticated molecular tests — like rapid strep throat tests, home pregnancy tests, or blood-glucose monitoring in diabetes patients — in clinics and at home. The PCD aims to apply these innovations across a variety of areas using a three-prong approach: developing new reagents and tests to make advanced patient monitoring possible; designing and creating the

The NIH Center for Future Technologies in Cancer Care (CFTCC), which Klapperich also directs at BU, will now fall under the umbrella of the new Precision Diagnostics Center

algorithms and devices that would house these technologies; and partnering with industry and government to translate innovations into the marketplace. According the Klapperich, while there are other organizations and institutions that explore point-of-care diagnostics, this center is unlike any other effort in this space due to its unique research approaches. In addition to leveraging expertise from the medical campus, the PDC will also tap into the Photonics Center to explore using light-based technologies for non-invasive diagnostics and monitoring. “The Center will play to BU’s unique strengths as a research university, including capabilities in infectious disease, expertise addressing healthcare disparities in underserved communities, and our Photonics Center. We’re excited to access those resources and expertise to make a global impact where it is most needed,” she said. Next steps for the PCD include hosting networking and professional development opportunities for faculty, students, postdocs and residents — such as workshops, seminars and symposia — to attract new members and continue building community. The other founding core faculty members of the PDC include: Professor Edward Damiano (BME), Professor Muhammad Zaman (BME, MSE), Professor Thomas Bifano (ME, MSE), Professor Mark Grinstaff (BME, Chemistry), PROFESSOR THOMAS LITTLE (ECE, SE), PROFESSOR IOANNIS PASCHALIDIS (ECE, BME, SE), Associate Professor James Galagan (BME, Microbiology), Assistant Professor Allison Dennis (BME, MSE) and PROFESSOR AVRUM SPIRA (MED, SE).

CISE HOSTS ROBOTICS & AI RESEARCH EVENT The Center for Information and Systems Engineering (CISE) partnered with Greg Woolf, CEO of Coalesce.Info and moderator of The Cognitive Computing Group of Boston, to host a community evening focused on Robotics & AI research at Boston University, on February 28, 2017. The event began with a demonstration of a student-built robot by the Boston University Academy First Robotics team, Overclocked. PROFESSOR IOANNIS PASCHALIDIS (ECE, BME, SE), Director of CISE, opened the presentations by giving an overview of the direction and efforts of the center. Presentations featured BU College of Engineering faculty, PROFESSOR CHRISTOS CASSANDRAS (ECE, SE), PROFESSOR CALIN BELTA (ME, ECE, BIOINFORMATICS, SE), and Professor Janusz Konrad. Cassandras discussed his work with ‘Robotics and Automation in Smart Cities’, Belta gave an overview of his Robotics lab projects and discussed ‘Formal Languages for Human-Robot Interaction’ and Konrad spoke about ‘Localization and Recognition of Indoor Activities in the Age of Privacy Concerns’. Representing industry, invited speaker, Jacob Holstein, Deployment Engineer, Amazon Robotics, discussed the use of cutting-edge robots at Amazon’s fulfillment centers. To close out the evening, meeting attendees were given a guided tour of the Engineering Product Innovation Center (EPIC) by Professor Gerald Fine and the Robotics lab by PhD students, Zachary Serlin and Xiao Li. Attendees had the opportunity to see firsthand BU’s commitment to innovation and advancement in the fields of robotics and machine learning.

Tour group in Robotics lab. Photo by Dave Green

BUA Overclocked Team. Photo by Dave Green

PARDEE CENTER HOSTS BU CONFERENCE ON SUSTAINABILITY RESEARCH The Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future co-sponsored the BU Conference on Sustainability Research. Approximately 100 people attended the one-day conference that featured presentations by Boston University faculty with a diverse range of expertise on their research related to sustainability issues (a full list of presenters can be viewed below). Each of the four sessions — which focused on measuring sustainability, modeling sustainability, human dimensions of sustainability, and future sustainability — took an interdisciplinary approach, and the discussion throughout the day explored sustainability challenges and solutions through ecological, economic, societal, and technological lenses, among others. Following opening remarks by Pardee Center Director Anthony Janetos and College of Arts and Sciences Dean Ann Cudd, Prof. Lucy Hutyra (Earth and Environment) moderated the first session on measuring sustainability. Panelists included PROFESSOR NATHAN PHILLIPS (EARTH AND ENVIRONMENT, SE), Professor Pam Templer (Biology), PROFESSOR MICHAEL GEVELBER (ME, MSE, SE), and PROFESSOR THOMAS LITTLE (ECE, SE). Topics included measuring local and regional energy use, carbon storage, commercial buildings energy use, and smart lighting technology. The second session, moderated by BU Sustainability Director Dennis Carlberg, focused on modeling sustainability. Prof. Peter Fox-Penner (Questrom) gave an overview of his newly created Institute for Sustainable Energy and Prof. Kevin Gallagher (Global Development Policy) spoke about his research on climate change, trade, and finance conducted at the Global Economic Governance Initiative (GEGI), of Boston University Division of Systems Engineering Annual Report, 2016–2017

which he is the Co-Director. Conor Gately (Earth and Environment) and Prof. Jonathan Levy (Environmental Health) discussed methods to improve greenhouse gas emissions inventories and the public health benefits of clean energy. The third session on the human dimensions of sustainability was moderated by Initiative on Cities Executive Director Katharine Lusk and featured Prof. Cutler Cleveland (Earth and Environment), Prof. Henrik Selin (International Relations) and Prof. Anne Short (Earth and Environment). Topics included energy end use and energy transitions, efforts to reduce hazardous substances, and social and ecological aspects of sustainable development. The final session of the conference focused on the future of sustainability. Pardee Center Director Anthony Janetos set the stage by explaining the importance of prediction, adaptation, and risk management and tolerance. Prof. Les Kaufman (Biology), Prof. James McCann (History), and Prof. Madhu Dutta-Koehler (City Planning and Urban Affairs) followed with a wide-ranging discussion that explored the future of sustainability for marine ecosystems, urban areas, and the interface between human and natural systems. The BU Conference on Sustainability Research was co-sponsored by the Pardee Center, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Department of Earth and Environment, the Pardee School of Global Studies, and the Institute for Sustainable Energy. 27

Professor Thomas Little (second from right) and his colleagues at LESA recently received a patent for a system of smart LED lights and sensors that can detect the location and poses of occupants in a room without using cameras. Photo by Jackie Ricciardi

NEW SENSORS FOR SMART LIGHTING Responsive sensors aim to improve human health and lighting efficiency By Caitlin Bird Imagine sitting in a secluded corner of a college library, working steadily on a last-minute paper. Just as you reach the concluding paragraph, summing up your argument, the lights go out, forcing you to get up and wave your arms around. In an energy-efficient room, the lights may be controlled by motion sensors that only turn on when they detect that someone is moving. However, if everyone, like you, is quietly working, the lights can’t register their presence, which doesn’t always serve the students well. Now, a team from the Lighting Enabled Systems & Applications Engineering Research Center (LESA ERC)—a combined effort of Boston University, the University of New Mexico, Thomas Jefferson University, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) faculty and graduate students—is tackling the problem. Funded primarily by the National Science Foundation, the center researches and designs smart lighting: lights, sensors, and controls that can adapt to better support human productivity, energy efficiency, and wellness. In September 2016, the team was awarded a US patent titled “Sensory Lighting System and Method for Characterizing an Illumination Space” for a system of LED lights and sensors that can detect the location and poses of occupants in a room without using cameras. While occupancy sensing is not a new idea, the innovation is to interpret the reflected light in a room using low-cost sensors built into the lights, without using cameras. “The lights in a space are strategically located,” says PROFESSOR THOMAS LITTLE (ECE, SE), associate director of the LESA ERC, referring to his office overhead lights. “They’re in a good position in these indoor environments to interact with us.” Rather than completely overhauling lighting design, Little

wants to make what’s already there smarter. He and his colleagues have been working on a system of responsive LED lights called luminaires, which they have designed to be energy efficient, increase productivity, and improve health by responding to the needs of people in the room. Sensors embedded in the luminaires, called “time-of-flight” sensors, can detect people and objects in a room and change lighting intensity, turn lights on and off, and even adjust color. For example, the system could change the balance of red and blue light to mimic sunlight in a room without windows, rather than relying on fluorescent bulbs. The sensors measure location by emitting a brief pulse of light and timing how long it takes that light to reach the people and objects in the room, a process that is also used in some types of radar or sonar. By combining time-of-flight data from multiple sensors throughout a room, it is possible to differentiate between people, pets, and furniture, and to classify actions such as sitting, standing, or writing at a whiteboard. As an example, a speaker giving a talk at the front of a classroom could use arm movements to change the lighting settings in the room or to advance the pages of a PowerPoint presentation. Because the new sensors don’t record images, the scientists hope that they can allay privacy concerns that may come with using cameras. The sensors do collect short-range location data, or the distances to objects or people in the room, and this “indoor GPS” function has some privacy implications. However, the sensors would be safe to install in areas where recording is already prohibited, such as bathrooms and other private spaces. According to Little, one of the eventual goals for smart lighting is to maximize lighting efficiency

by anticipating the lighting needs of individual people. For example, specific routes in a building could be illuminated to provide light and guidance as necessary. An office worker could someday come to work, leave her car in the parking garage, and make her way to her cubicle in a high-rise office with lights turning on before her and off behind. In this way, the lights are only using energy in the time and place that they are needed. LESA ERC collaborators have placed the patented lighting in two experimental rooms: a smart conference room at RPI and a smart hospital room at the center’s site at the University of New Mexico. In addition to studying efficiency, researchers hope that the luminaires can improve human health. Certain kinds of depression, such as seasonal affective disorder, and circadian rhythm disorders can improve with exposure to different levels of light, according to the Mayo Clinic.

blue light to help us wake up, but exposure to blue light after dark might have harmful consequences, such as disrupting our sleep schedule and mood. (There is even an industry now that produces blue light filters for computer screens, purporting to relieve eyestrain and improve sleep.) LESA ERC’s luminaires could help regulate hospital patients’ exposure to blue light to better replicate natural daylight, which is one of the effects currently being studied at the center. LESA ERC’s patented lighting system has the potential to change the landscape of smart lighting, and the researchers are exploring commercialization opportunities. Right now, we rely on passive sensors that don’t respond to human needs. “If I sit at my desk and I don’t move, after 15 minutes the lights go out. All the offices are like that,” says Little. But in the quickly approaching future, a “smart building” with responsive luminaires

“The increasing body of clinical evidence suggests that blue light is critical for maintaining the human circadian rhythm,” says Little. The sun produces

could turn on the lights for us, set themselves up for our school or work purposes, and maybe even make us healthier while they do it.

THINKING ABOUT SMART CITIES: BU AND OTHER EXPERTS CONFER IN A WASHINGTON FORUM Excerpt from an article by Sara Rimer, BU Today While proponents of smart cities differ about the details of what exactly makes a smart city smart, they all agree on one thing: life is better in a smart city. It’s safer, greener, less congested, cleaner, and more cost- and energy-efficient. From the streets to municipal services, it is easier to navigate. It’s about collecting and acting upon the data that is available from an ever-increasing number of sources—sensors in roads, mobile phones, commercial transactions, census and other public records, even personal fitness trackers.

massive amounts of money on dumb cities, or dumb things that have no intelligence to them, and really very little on making them smart. Luckily, that’s beginning to change both here and around the world, but we need to accelerate that change, and that’s part of what this conversation is about.” Atkinson noted that ITIF has been working closely with the Obama administration on its National Smart Cities Initiative, launched in September 2015. He held up BU, and Boston, as examples of places that are working on model smart city efforts.

In a smart city, people don’t spend half their lives sitting in traffic. That’s because sensors embedded in roads, traffic lights, and tollbooths collect data and share it through wireless technology to keep vehicles moving (while reducing carbon emissions). City hall quickly learns about potholes, because the drivers hitting them report their location on their smartphones.

The other panelists were Daniel Castro, ITIF vice president, Lauren Lockwood, chief digital officer for the city of Boston, and Elizabeth Grossman, director of civic projects in Microsoft’s Technology and Civic Engagement group.

If Boston were a smart city, the traffic lights on Commonwealth Avenue would know that BU students cross the street between classes—and would also know where they cross—and the lights would flash red accordingly. During snowstorms, student data could tell the snowplows when and where to start plowing. These are a few of the things that PROFESSOR AZER BESTAVROS (CS, ECE, SE), director of BU’s Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering, and a group of other experts talked about during a panel discussion on smart cities hosted by Boston University and the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) at its offices in Washington October 27, 2016. “A smart city has to be programmable,” said Bestavros. “Cities are not smart. It’s people that are smart. People can put their smarts into programs and as a result, cities can be adaptable, customizable, nimble, personable.” One major theme of the discussion was the need for smart infrastructure to address problems in America’s cities related to congestion, grid security, and aging roads, bridges, and water supply networks. “At the federal level, in smart transportation, we invest on the order of what we could build 10 miles of road with—that’s how little we’re investing,” said Robert D. Atkinson, ITIF president, who introduced the panelists. “We’re spending

Boston University Division of Systems Engineering Annual Report, 2016–2017

The smart cities movement has brought together government officials—the National Science Foundation (NSF) is the lead federal agency for the National Smart Cities Initiative—with university researchers as well as people from industry, foundations, and other nonprofits. BU, with the MBTA running through its urban campus, can be thought of as a laboratory for smart cities, Bestavros said. As part of an NSF-funded project called SCOPE (Smart-city Cloud-based Open Platform and Ecosystem), BU researchers from the Hariri Institute, CAS, the College of Engineering, and the Initiative on Cities, are testing a wide range of possibilities, from smart parking apps to using traffic data to reduce carbon emissions, he said. Students are contributing to these projects through the CAS Data Mechanics course. “Students need something they can relate to,” Bestavros said, “and there is nothing they relate to more than the city where they live.” For all the promise of smart cities, Bestravos and the other panelists expressed concern about the risk of deepening the digital divide. “When we talk about technologies for smart cities, we should think about how to lessen the divide or eliminate it altogether,” Bestavros said. Even more important than collecting the data and making it available is “providing the tools and services that allow this data to be used—services that don’t require people to be techies.” Governments and municipalities should insist on open design and open sourcing, he added. “The whole point is to connect all these things together. You cannot just have traffic controlled separately from the parking system. They have to play together.”

RESEARCH LABORATORIES ANDERSSON LABORATORY

BU ROBOTICS LABORATORY

The Andersson Laboratory at Boston University focuses on systems and control theory, driven in large part by applications in nanobioscience, nanotechnology, and robotics. Through a combination of fundamental theory, applied mathematics, and physical experiments, we explore dynamics in nanometer-scale systems. By focusing on scale-invariant algorithms, we draw inspiration from robotics and multi-agent systems and seek, in turn, to apply our techniques in that domain.

The Boston University Robotics Lab occupies about 4,000 sq. ft. in the Engineering Product Innovation Center (EPIC) on BU’s Charles River campus. It includes an experimental arena, a workshop, a student seating area, a conference room, and a kitchen. The experimental arena consists of a motion capture system containing about 50 infra-red cameras and several short-throw projectors that can create dynamical images on the floor. Experiments are performed with several ground and air autonomous vehicles, both off-the-shelf and built in-house. The workshop provides the ability to perform on-site robot design, construction, and repair. There is seating for 28 people in the student seating area and seating for 12 in the conference room. There are AV systems in both the seating area and conference room, with a high-definition camera in the conference room for longdistance meetings. There are numerous whiteboards throughout the lab. Research in the lab spans several areas of robotics, including motion planning, control, machine learning, and computer vision.

Professor Sean Andersson www.bu.edu/anderssonlab 110 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA 02215 617–353–4949

ADVANCED MATERIALS PROCESS CONTROL LABORATORY Professor Michael Gevelber www.bu.edu/pcl 15 St. Mary’s St., Brookline, MA 02446 617–353–9572

Research in this laboratory focuses on improving materials processing capabilities by applying a controls-based approach. Our controls-based approach integrates process modeling, sensor development, both system and control design, and experimentation to achieve greater control of material microstructure as well as improving yield and maximizing production rate. Research projects, typically conducted with industry partners, span a range of application areas including opto-electronic applications, advanced engines, power systems, and biomedical applications. Ongoing research projects include real-time control for plasma spray for thermal barrier coatings and fuel cells, e-beam deposition for precision optical coatings, electrospinning of nanofibers, chemical vapor deposition, and Czochralski crystal growth. Research is also being conducted on developing intelligent control and sensing approaches for optimizing building HVAC systems, using university buildings to test out new ideas.

BIOROBOTICS RESEARCH GROUP (BRG) Adjunct Professor Pierre Dupont www.bu.edu/biorobotics Rm 350, Enders Building, Boston Children’s Hospital 300 Longwood Ave., Boston, MA 02115 617–919–3562

The BioRobotics Research Group (BRG) solves theoretical and practical problems in minimally invasive surgery. They specialize in medical robot and instrument design, development of imaging techniques for surgical guidance, modeling tool tissue interaction; and teleoperation/automation of instrument motion. They utilize analytical tools from robotics, dynamics and control together with innovative design techniques to create successful solutions. The team members come from diverse backgrounds with degrees in mechanical/biomedical/electrical engineering and medicine. Their specialties range from biomedical robotics, clinical practice and imaging to product design and many areas in between.

Professors Calin Belta (Director), Sean Andersson, John Baillieul, Christos Cassandras and Roberto Tron sites.bu.edu/robotics 750 Commonwealth Avenue, Brookline, MA 02446

CONTROL OF DISCRETE EVENT SYSTEMS (CODES) LABORATORY Professor Christos Cassandras people.bu.edu/cgc/CODES 8 St. Mary’s Street, Boston MA 02215 617–353–7154

The Control of Discrete Event Systems (CODES) Laboratory involves faculty and graduate students from the Division of Systems Engineering and operates within the Center for Information and Systems Engineering (CISE). Members of CODES conduct research on modeling, design, analysis, performance evaluation, control, and optimization of a variety of discrete event and hybrid systems including communication and sensor networks, manufacturing, transportation, and multiagent systems. Some of the best-known analytical frameworks and methodologies in the field of discrete event systems have been pioneered by members of the CODES Laboratory. CODES research projects are supported by several federal agencies and by industry.

DATA SCIENCE AND MACHINE LEARNING LABORATORY Professor Venkatesh Saligrama sites.bu.edu/data 8 St. Mary’s Street, Boston MA 02215 617-353-1040

The Data Science & Machine Learning laboratory is involved in projects related to Machine Learning, Vision & Learning, Structured Signal Processing, and Decision & Control. In the area of machine learning recent research projects have dealt with resource constrained machine learning, graph-structured signal detection and recovery, topic modeling and anomaly detection. Another focus of our recent research is on developing machine learning methods in the context of computer vision. We work on problems involving video analytics in highly cluttered scenes, search and retrieval in large video stores, zero-shot learning, person re-identification and real-time anomaly detection.

HYBRID AND NETWORKED SYSTEMS LABORATORY (HYNESS LAB)

INTELLIGENT MECHATRONICS LABORATORY

We are interested in phenomena that occur when continuous dynamics, described by systems of differential equations, are combined with discrete dynamics, modeled as automata or state transition graphs. Such systems are called hybrid, and examples range from man-made systems such as mobile robots, to naturally occurring systems such as biochemical networks, where the continuous dynamics of metabolic processes is regulated by the logic of gene expression. Our approach to the analysis and control of such systems combine concepts and tools from computer science and control theory. Our current application areas are networked mobile robotics, swarming, gene networks, and genome scale metabolic analysis.

This laboratory is equipped with a wide variety of robotic devices including RF-networked sensor arrays, nearly forty mobile ground robots, twelve quadrotor autonomous air vehicles, and an infrared based motion capture system for precise indoor positioning. Additional resources include real-time control software, hand-held computing and communication devices, workstations, and a wide variety of sensors and actuators. This equipment is dedicated to research in limited-bandwidth control problems, symbolic control, cooperative systems and control, and animal-inspired agile flight control.

INFORMATION & DATA SCIENCES (IDS) LABORATORY

Professors David Starobinski and Ari Trachtenberg www.nislab.bu.edu 8 St. Mary’s St., Boston, MA 02215 617–353–0202, 617–353–1581

Professor Calin Belta sites.bu.edu/hyness 750 Commonwealth Avenue, Brookline, MA 02446 617–353–9586

Professors Christos Cassandras, David Castañón, W. Clem Karl, Janusz Konrad, Thomas Little, Prakash Ishwar, Hamid Nawab, Bobak Nazer, Alexander Olshevsky, Ioannis Paschalidis, Venkatesh Saligrama, David Starobinski, Ari Trachtenberg, Robert M. Gray, Vivek Goyal, Brian Kulis, Wenchao Li, Lei Tian www.bu.edu/iss 8 St. Mary’s St., Boston MA 02215 617–353–1668, 617–353–9919 IDS research centers on the sensing, communication, and processing of various forms of information with the objective of designing and synthesizing secure networked systems for optimum decision-making and control. IDS members have a broad range of research interests but share a common approach to problem-solving, the pursuit of foundational research, and the development and utilization of sophisticated analytic and algorithmic tools from mathematics, statistics, computer science, and physics. The research conducted by IDS faculty and students covers a broad spectrum of problems, from advanced theory to practical algorithm implementation, in the following areas: • Machine Learning, Big Data, and Analytics • Computational Imaging and Inverse Problems • Decision and Estimation Theory • Signal, Image and Video Processing • Biological and Medical Imaging • Computational and Systems Biology • Medical Informatics • Communication and Information Theory • Network Security

Boston University Division of Systems Engineering Annual Report, 2016–2017

Professors John Baillieul, Sean Andersson, and Hua Wang www.bu.edu/iml 110 Cummington Mall, Boston MA 02215 617–353–9848

LABORATORY OF NETWORKING AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS (NISLAB)

The Laboratory of Networking and Information Systems (NISLAB) is involved in providing novel perspectives to modern networking with emphasis on scalability, heterogeneity, and performance. Our research roots into the mathematical fields of graph theory and algorithms, probability and stochastic processes, and coding theory with applications to content synchronization, network monitoring, wireless spectrum management, and advanced networking for scientific applications. Laboratory activities include a number of practical and theoretical projects involving about a dozen graduate and undergraduate students in the department.

MULTI-DIMENSIONAL SIGNAL PROCESSING (MDSP) LABORATORY Professor W. Clem Karl mdsp.bu.edu 8 St. Mary’s St., Boston, MA 02215 617–353–1668 The MDSP lab conducts research in the general area of computational imaging. The applications that motivate this research include, but are not limited to, problems arising in automatic target detection and recognition, geophysical inverse problems (such as finding oil and analyzing the atmosphere), security (such as baggage screening) and medical estimation problems (such as tomography and MRI). Our general goal is to develop efficient methods for the extraction of information from diverse data sources in the presence of uncertainty. The approach we take is based on the development of statistical models for both observations and prior knowledge and the subsequent use of these models for optimal or near-optimal processing.

MULTIMEDIA COMMUNICATIONS LABORATORY Professor Thomas Little hulk.bu.edu 8 St. Mary’s St., Boston, MA 02215 617–353–9877 The Multimedia Communications Laboratory (MCL) at Boston University focuses on topics in ubiquitous distributed computing. Our legacy work is in the area of distributed multimedia information systems emphasizing time-dependent and continuous media data such as audio and video. Recent work targets wireless networking and communications to support ambient computing in indoor (smart rooms) and outdoor (vehicles) contexts.

NETWORKS RESEARCH GROUP (NRG) Professors Azer Bestavros, John Byers, Mark Crovella, and Abraham Matta www.bu.edu/cs/nrg/ 111 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA 02215 617-353-8919 The Networks Research Group (NRG) conducts basic research in networking within the Department of Computer Science at Boston University. Our research interests are broad, and encompass network measurement, the design of new network architectures and network protocols, the design and implementation of networked applications and systems, and network performance analysis. Application domains of interest range from cloud computing to social networks to peer-topeer systems.

PASCHALIDIS NETWORK OPTIMIZATION & CONTROL (NOC) LABORATORY Professor Ioannis Paschalidis sites.bu.edu/paschalidis 8 St. Mary’s Street, Room 415, Boston, MA 02215 617-353-0434 Research deals with fundamental aspects of optimizing the design and operation of networks as well as designing control algorithms to regulate their operation. Networks are pervasive in a variety of application domains, from computer, communication, and sensor networks to supply chains, distribution networks, and biological networks like protein interaction and metabolic networks. Recent research topics include transmission scheduling in wireless networks, optimal deployment of networks of mobile agents, network routing, network anomaly detection, pricing and resource allocation, network simulation, intelligent warehouse management, protein docking, and optimization of metabolic networks.

RELIABLE COMPUTING LABORATORY Professors Mark Karpovsky and Lev Levitin www.bu.edu/reliable 8 St. Mary’s Street, Boston, MA 02215 617-353-4607 Members of the laboratory conduct research on a broad variety of topics, including the design of computer chips, efficient hardware testing at chip, board, and system levels; functional software testing, efficient signal processing algorithms, coding and decoding; latency, saturation, and critical phenomena in interconnection networks and deadlock prevention in computer networks.

SPIRA-LENBURG LABORATORY Professor Avrum Spira www.bumc.bu.edu/compbiomed/labs/spira-lenburg One Boston Medical Center Place, Room E633, Boston, MA 02118 617-414-6980 Our focus is on translational research to better understand lung biology and disease using post-genomic technologies and computational tools. The long terms goals of our lab are two-fold. On the one hand, we seek to leverage these approaches to improve the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of lung disease. On the other hand, we seek to develop and apply new research approaches and to train physician-scientists and graduate students who can apply these tools in the setting of translational research.

STRUCTURAL BIOINFORMATICS LABORATORY Professor Sandor Vajda www.structure.bu.edu 44 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA 02215 617–353–4757 The focus of this laboratory is the development and application of computational tools for the analysis of protein structure and protein-ligand interactions. Some of the particular problems we currently study are the evaluation of binding free energy in proteinprotein complexes, development of efficient docking algorithms, computational solvent mapping of proteins using molecular probes to identify the most favorable binding positions, method development for fragment-based drug design, construction of an enzyme binding site database, and improving the prediction of protein active sites by homology modeling.

VISUAL INFORMATION PROCESSING LABORATORY Professors Janusz Konrad and Prakash Ishwar www.vip.bu.edu 8 St. Mary’s Street, Rooms 406, 446, Boston, MA 02215 617-353-1040 The VIP Laboratory belongs to the Information and Data Sciences (IDS) Group in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Boston University. Its three main objectives are sponsored research, student training, and technology transfer in the broad areas of image, video and multimedia processing. It has been home to graduate and undergraduate students working on various aspects of visual information processing, such as visual surveillance, 3-D video or human-computer interfaces. The most recent research thrust in the VIP Laboratory is directed towards the development of next-generation user authentication methods to replace passcodes, key-cards, RFID tags, etc. The focus is on gesture-based authentication where a user performs, for example, a unique arm swing, allowing the system to recognize him or her. The advantage of such authentication over today’s fingerprint or iris scans is that once such a scan is compromised it cannot be recovered, whereas a gesture can be changed.

THE CENTER FOR INFORMATION AND SYSTEMS ENGINEERING (CISE) The Center for Information and Systems Engineering (CISE) is a prominent interdisciplinary research center at Boston University with affiliated faculty from the College of Engineering, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Questrom School of Business. Research in CISE encompasses information and data sciences and their relevance to various application domains incorporating the analysis, design, and management of complex systems. The Center has 41 affiliated faculty and approximately $8 million in annual research expenditures. Created in 2002, CISE catalyzes research collaborations among its faculty, coordinates interactions with industry, and supports a diverse community of faculty and students. CISE-sponsored activities include a weekly seminar series, student-led annual conference, and a Resident Scholar program. Over the years, CISE has organized numerous research symposia, workshops, and scientific meetings. CISE faculty are well recognized for their contributions to a vast range of research areas including applied probability, computer science, control and decision theory, information theory, machine learning, network systems, operation research, optimization, signal processing, simulation, stochastic processes, and statistics. Among the CISE faculty, two are Distinguished Professors of Engineering, one is a Distinguished Faculty Fellow in Engineering, one has been recognized as Innovator of the Year by Boston University, 9 are Fellows of their corresponding professional societies, three have been presidents of an IEEE Society, 15 have received an NSF Career Award, five have received other Early Career Awards including a Presidential Early Career Award and a Career Excellence Award, and one has received The Tegan Family Distinguished Faculty Fellowship. CISE faculty have also served as Editors-in-Chief of three scientific journals in the past and currently are in the same role in three other journals. SPONSORED CISE RESEARCH IS COMPRISED OF THE FOLLOWING APPLICATION AREAS: • Automation, Robotics and Control • Computational Biology and Medicine • Cyber-Physical Systems • Data Analytics • Energy Systems • Information Sciences • Networks

NEW FACULTY JOINING CISE IN 2016-2017 WENCHAO LI is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Boston University and directs the Dependable Computing Laboratory. He received a B.S., M.S., and PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences and a B.A. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to joining BU, he was a Computer Scientist in the Computer Science Laboratory at SRI International, Menlo Park. He is a recipient of numerous awards including the ACM Outstanding PhD Dissertation Award in Electronic Design Automation and the Leon O. Chua Award at UC Berkeley for outstanding achievement in the area of nonlinear science.

Boston University Division of Systems Engineering Annual Report, 2016–2017

ALEXANDER OLSHEVSKY is an Assistant Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Systems Engineering at Boston University. Olshevsky received his M.S. and PhD from MIT in 2006 and 2010, both in electrical engineering and computer science. He received a B.S. in applied mathematics and electrical engineering from Georgia Tech in 2004. His research interests focus on distributed control and optimization, with an eye to designing policies which allow teams of autonomous agents to cooperate and function reliably timevarying environments. A particular emphasis of his recent work is on decentralized learning in multi-agent systems. He is a recipient of numerous awards including the NSF Career Award and the Young Investigator award from the Air Force.

CISE AFFILIATED FACULTY COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING • BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING: S. Vajda • ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING: J. Carruthers, C. Cassandras (Head, Division of Systems Engineering), D. Castanon, A. Coskun, M. Egele, V. Goyal, P. Ishwar, W. Karl (Chair, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering), J. Konrad, B. Kulis, L. Levitin, W. Li, T. Little (Associate Dean of Engineering, Educational Initiatives), B. Nazer, A. Olshevsky, I. Paschalidis (Director, CISE), V. Saligrama, D. Starobinski, A. Trachtenberg • MECHANICAL ENGINEERING: S. Andersson, J. Baillieul, C. Belta, M. Caramanis, M. Gevelber, J. Perkins, R. Tron, P. Vakili, H. Wang (Associate Head, Division of Systems Engineering)

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES • COMPUTER SCIENCE: A. Bestavros (Director, Hariri Institute), M. Crovella, A. Matta • EARTH AND ENVIRONMENT: L. Hutyra, N. Phillips • MATHEMATICS AND STATISTICS: L. Carvalho, E. Kolaczyk, M. Kon, K. Spiliopoulos

QUESTROM SCHOOL OF BUSINESS • FINANCE: N. Kulatilaka • INFORMATION SYSTEMS: B. Lubin • OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT: E. Peköz

CISE ADMINISTRATION • Ioannis Paschalidis, Director • Christina Polyzos, Associate Director • Denise Joseph, Programs Manager

2016–2017 CISE HIGHLIGHTS CISE serves as a platform for collaboration and multidisciplinary research across schools, departments, and laboratories at Boston University. The center was developed to support affiliated faculty and students in various capacities, to serve as a liaison in forging relationships, and to organize events that reinforce this end by encouraging engagement and development. While continuing to grow and progress, CISE consistently initiates new programs, develops partnerships and outreach programs, organizes events to enhance visibility and provides support for graduate students with workshops and resources that enhance career development and opportunities to share ideas.

RESIDENT SCHOLAR PROGRAM CISE faculty are encouraged to invite renowned scholars and eminent scientists to share their ideas through the Resident Scholar Program. This program facilitates collaboration among national and international universities. This year, CISE hosted faculty from the University of Colorado Boulder, Uppsala University in Sweden, and the University of Michigan. CISE Resident Scholars are on the Boston University campus on a short-term basis for collaborative research interactions with CISEaffiliated faculty. Scholars present lectures and engage with faculty and students throughout their stay.

RESIDENT SCHOLARS 2016–2017 RESIDENT SCHOLARS

DATE OF RESIDENCE

Stéphane Lafortune University of Michigan

June 2017

Subhrakanti Dey Uppsala University

February 2017;

Lucy Pao University of Colorado Boulder

Sept/Oct 2016

CISE SEMINARS AND EVENTS CISE manages a weekly seminar series featuring distinguished academic and industrial researchers presenting their work to CISE faculty, students and guests. These seminars are usually held on Fridays at 8 St. Mary’s Street. See complete list of speakers below. In the 2016-17 academic year, CISE sponsored 15 seminars during the fall semester and 12 seminars during the spring semester. CISE Seminars support a student host program for several graduate students who organize meetings between the seminar speakers and faculty. These seminars are publicized via email announcements that are sent out to a comprehensive e-mail list including BU faculty, graduate students, local academics and industry. CISE partners with governmental agencies such as the National Science Foundation to support principle investigators and research leaders both nationally and internationally. These researchers and leaders share ideas, showcase interdisciplinary work, and build community to provide insight and solutions to a variety of areas such as healthcare and transportation. CISE sponsors events to support its interdisciplinary research mission, increase the visibility of faculty and their projects, and create opportunities for networking and collaboration. CISE initiates and organizes events and workshops to help CISE students refine their presentation skills and enhance their professional network. Roundtables and Lunch and Learn meetings are organized to encourage discussions focusing on bringing together students, faculty and industry representatives with the goal of introducing students to real world situations and opportunities. Additionally, CISE advocates diversity by financially supporting minority and female students at relevant conferences. EVENTS • CISE Seminar Celebration – End of 2016-2017 Series, May 12, 2017 • CISE and Corporate Relations, April 11, 2017 • CISE Health Mini-Symposium, April 7, 2017 • NSF Workshop on Smart and Connected Health, March 20-22, 2017 • CISE Robotics & AI Event, February 28, 2017 • CISE Graduate Student Workshop 4.0, January 12, 2017

GLOBAL PARTNERSHIPS CISE Director, Ioannis Paschalidis, spearheaded university global partnerships by developing a structured framework for international collaborations. These partnerships forge bonds for new development and technology, facilitate shared research, and strengthen an environment of academic cooperation. One partnership that served as a springboard to future collaborations was between the College of Engineering at BU through CISE and the Faculty of Information Technology at Zhejiang through its State Key Laboratory of Industrial Control Technology. This initiative has led to new educational collaborations with other universities including establishing a dual degree program between Boston University and Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.

• CISE/SE Holiday Event, December 8, 2016 • CISE Industry Roundtable Events (4 events), September 2016 – April 2017 • CISE/MSE/SE and ISSO Workshop, September 30, 2016 • CISE Faculty and BU PR Team, September 28, 2016 • CISE Welcome Back Event, September 23, 2016 • CISE Presentation Bootcamp, September 9 & 16, 2016

CISE Workshop organizers: Shahrooz Zarbafian, Xi Yu, Feng Nan

CISE END OF THE YEAR SEMINAR SERIES – MAY 12, 2017 Commemorating the end of the successful 2016-2017 Seminar Series, CISE hosted a celebration bringing together CISE affiliated faculty and graduate students. CISE AND CORPORATE RELATIONS, LUNCH & LEARN – APRIL 11, 2017 Open to the entire BU community, these events provide attendees with actionable insights from industry professionals and a networking opportunity. The aim of these sessions is to build relationships between academics and industry experts. CISE partnered with Boston University’s Corporate Relations Office to host CISE alumni graduate student, Eran Simhon, research scientist at Philips Research North America. CISE HEALTH MINI-SYMPOSIUM: “LEARNING METHODS IN HEALTH CARE” – APRIL 7, 2017 This half-day mini-symposium highlighted work at the interface of machine learning and quantitative decision making with health and health care. This afternoon symposium, an extension of the CISE seminar series, featured talks by Tom Trikalinos from Brown University and David Sontag from MIT. Four graduate students, whose research is related to the topic, presented their work.

Boston University Division of Systems Engineering Annual Report, 2016–2017

NSF WORKSHOP ON SMART AND CONNECTED HEALTH – MARCH 20-22, 2017 The NSF Workshop on Smart and Connected Health was coordinated by CISE. The premise of the Workshop was to assemble the community of Principle Investigators supported by the NSF Smart and Connected Health Program. Experts and leaders from academia, relevant industrial organizations, and government whose activities and interests closely related to the theme of Smart and Connected Health gathered at BU. The goal of the workshop was to identify new methods to accelerate development, develop a long-term agenda, discuss innovative approaches, strengthen multidisciplinary directions, and bring others in the field together. CISE Director, Professor Ioannis Paschalidis was invited by the National Science Foundation to organize and chair this workshop. The Visioning Meeting, an invitation only event was attended by 63 research leaders. The PI session with over 140 attendees brought together Visioning leaders and PI’s to discuss research progress and challenges. CISE ROBOTICS & AI EVENT – FEBRUARY 28, 2017 CISE partnered with The Cognitive Computing Group of Boston to host a community evening focused on Robotics and AI research. Presentations featured talks by Professors Cassandras, Belta, Konrad, and Paschalidis, a speaker from Amazon, and a demonstration by BU’s Academy award winning high school robotics team. The evening ended with tours of BU’s cutting-edge robotics lab and the EPIC center. Attendees from diverse industries had the opportunity to see BU’s commitment to innovation and advancement in the fields of robotics and machine learning.

CISE INDUSTRY ROUNDTABLE EVENTS – SEPTEMBER 2016 THROUGH APRIL 2017 CISE, with the assistance of CISE affiliated faculty, hosts alumni, employed in local industry, to talk to graduate students in roundtable discussions and Q & A sessions. The four well attended roundtable events provided a networking opportunity for students. Roundtable presenters included CISE alumni working at Akamai Technologies, Mathworks and Geode Capital Management. CISE GRADUATE STUDENT WORKSHOP 4.0 (CGSW) – JANUARY 12, 2017 CGSW 4.0, an all-day event organized by CISE students for CISE students, is an opportunity for graduate students to present their research. This year, 10 students, two new CISE affiliated faculty and one post-doctoral student presented their research results to an audience of students and faculty. The event was open to all BU students to attend, listen, and participate, although only CISE students presented. CISE students are those whose advisors are CISE affiliated faculty. The day concluded with a reception at the BU Castle, honoring the presentation winners, chosen by an audience of their peers. Over 35 students and several faculty and staff attended the event. BEST PRESENTER: • Rebecca Swaszek: “Bike Sharing System Inventory Management: Receding Horizon Control Routing and Incentives” PRESENTATION HONORABLE MENTIONS: • Bee Vang: “Geometric Control of Quadrotors and Contraction Analysis” • Nan Zhou: ”Optimal Event-Driven Multi-Agent Persistent Monitoring of a Finite Set of Targets“ MACS (MOST ATTENTIVE CISE STUDENTS): • Sadra Sadraddini • Jonathan Daniel Chamberlain • Yue Zhang WOMEN IN TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE - OCTOBER 19-21, 2016, HOUSTON TEXAS For the 3rd consecutive year, CISE and SE supported four female students to attend the Grace Hopper Celebration, the world’s largest conference for women in technology. These women presented their research, networked, increased visibility in their respective disciplines, engaged in discourse with other professionals, and more importantly, learned and were inspired by prominent women who transform the course of technology. CISE/SE FESTIVE EVENT – DECEMBER 8, 2016 CISE and SE celebrated the Holidays by hosting a brunch for CISE affiliated faculty and students and BU colleagues.

(left to right) Sepideh Pourazarm, Xinmiao Sun, Tingting Xu, and Yue Joyce Zhang at Women in Technology Conference

CISE FACULTY AND BU PR – CHRONICAL RESEARCH NARRATIVES – SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 CISE organized a workshop with Boston University’s public relations office tailored to research faculty on the use of available BU resources to communicate their research to key stakeholders in the community. The workshop focused on using social media and developing skills to speak with media organizations. CISE PRESENTATION BOOTCAMP – SEPTEMBER 9 & 16, 2016 This workshop gave 16 CISE graduate students the opportunity to learn presentation skills through an intensive program designed to improve oral and visual performance.

NEW TECHNOLOGIES CISE affiliated faculty, Professor Calin Belta (ME, ECE, SE, Bioinformatics), Director of the BU Robotics Lab, with research groups of Professor Sean Andersson (ME, SE), Professor John Baillieul (ME, SE), Professor Christos Cassandras (ECE, SE) and Assistant Professor Roberto Tron (ME, SE), use the new Robotics Lab for workshop space to construct dynamic projects. Current projects address theoretical and implementation challenges in areas ranging from aerial and ground vehicles to the interface between living cells and micron-scale robots. Technologies developed here will impact many industries, from consumer goods, to transportation systems, and medical devices.

CISE-MSE-SE: INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS AND SCHOLARS OFFICE (ISSO) – SEPTEMBER 30, 2016

CORPORATE OUTREACH

CISE, MSE, and SE welcomed the ISSO for a workshop to facilitate international student inquiries in areas including internships and co-ops. This event was open to graduate students in other BU departments and divisions.

CISE has an active industrial outreach program to engage private sector partners in research collaboration and invite them as conference and seminar guests. These partnerships provide strategic value to CISE in their support of research proposals, placements

for CISE graduate students, and the opportunity to enhance the vitality of research by learning and reflecting the priorities of the private sector. To create visibility, CISE uses state-of-the-art social networking and cloud based technologies to communicate with academic, industry, potential students and other collaborators. CISE is actively engaged with BU Centers and Institutes such as the Initiative on Cities to create collaborative endeavors and partnerships in establishing sustainable solutions. Partnering with other BU associations, CISE faculty create connections and community on campus and externally. Industrial participants have included representatives from Constellation Energy, Draper Laboratories, Ember Corporation, EMC, Enernoc, Honeywell International, IBM Corporation, Lenox Hotel, Lincoln Laboratories, The MathWorks, Inc., Millennial Net, Inc., MITRE Corporation, Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL) NSTAR, Raymond Corporation, Opower, Ruben Companies, Schott Solar North America, Schlumberger, Siemens Enterprise Communications, Siemens Building Technologies, Textron Systems, Wells Fargo, Yokogawa Electric Co. and BOSCH.

GRANT AWARDS Active in research, CISE affiliated faculty have been awarded large research grants which promote scientific advancement and contribute to new knowledge in their respective application areas. Several of the significant grants include:

CAREER: Rich and Scalable Optimization for Modern Bayesian Nonparametric Learning Professor Brian Kulis CPS: Breakthrough: A Dynamic Optimization Framework for Connected Automated Vehicles in Urban Environments Professor Christos Cassandras, Professor Ioannis Paschalidis Decentralized Perception from Online Learning and Semantic Understanding Professor John Baillieul

ACCOLADES Calin Belta (ME, ECE, SE, Bioinformatics) was named fellow with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Azer Bestavros (CS, SE) was appointed as a William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor. David Castañón (ECE, SE) was Plenary speaker at the CASIS workshop in Livermore, CA in May 2017.

CPS: Frontier: Collaborative Research: Biocps for Engineering Professor Calin Belta

Christos Cassandras (ECE, SE Division Head) was a Semi-Plenary Speaker at the 55th Conference on Decision and Control in Las Vegas on December 12-14, 2016. He also was appointed to IEEE Fellow Evaluation Committee, IFAC Fellow Evaluation Committee, as the Chair, IFAC Major Awards Nominating Committee, Dept. Editor, J. of Discrete Event Dynamic Systems, Senior Editor, Automatica, Senior Editor, Journal of Control and Decision and to the Advisory Editorial Board, IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems.

Algorithmic Approaches to Personalized Health Care (NSF) Professor Ioannis Paschalidis

Vivek Goyal (ECE) was named an IEEE Signal Processing Society Distinguished Lecturer for 1/2017 to 12/2018.

SCOPE: A Smart City Cloud-Based Platform and Ecosystem Professor Azer Bestavros, Professor Christos Cassandras, Professor Lucy Hutyra, Professor Evimaria Terzi

Prakash Ishwar (ECE, SE) was promoted to full professor at BU in February 2017.

NSF ERC for Smart Lighting Professor Thomas Little

ALERT: Awareness & Locations of Explosives-Related Threats (DHS) Professor David Castanon, Professor Clem Karl, Professor Venkatesh Saligrama Sensing-Aware Decision Making for High-Dimensional Signals Professor Clem Karl, Professor Prakash Ishwar, Professor Venkatesh Saligrama CPS: SYNERGY: Collaborative Research: A Cyber-Physical Infrastructure for the Smart City Professor Christos Cassandras, Professor Azer Bestavros, Professor Ioannis Paschalidis, Professor Assaf Kfoury Coordinated Operation of Electric and Natural Gas Supply Networks: Optimization Process and Market Design Professor Michael Caramanis, Professor Pablo Ruiz UTOPIAN VEHICLE: Ultimately Transformed and Optimized Powertrain Integrated with Automated and Novel Vehicular and Highway Connectivity Leveraged for Efficiency Professor Christos Cassandras

Boston University Division of Systems Engineering Annual Report, 2016–2017

Eric Kolaczyk (Math/Stat, SE) was elected a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS). Ioannis Paschalidis (ECE, BME, SE, CISE Director) was a Plenary speaker, 2016 LIDS Student Conference, Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He was a finalist (with colleagues: Alyssa Pierson, Armin Ataei, and Mac Schwager) for the conference best paper award for the paper which appeared in the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), in May 16-21, 2016, Stockholm, Sweden. He supervised student, Theodora Brisimi, who won third prize and the Crowd Sourcing Prize in the IEEE Computer Society 70th Anniversary Student Challenge for a joint project in May 2016. David Starobinski (ECE, SE) was awarded Best paper award, IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (CNS) 2016 and is Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security since April 2017. Roberto Tron (ME, SE) was awarded outstanding reviewer for Automatica for the year 2016 from a pool of 2500 reviewers.

CISE SEMINARS 2016-2017

CO-SPONSORED WITH THE DIVISION OF SYSTEMS ENGINEERING

DATE

SPEAKER

TITLE

AFFILIATION

TALK TITLE

FACULTY HOST

STUDENT HOST

June 3, 2016

Balรกzs Kulcsรกr

Associate Professor

Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden.

Back-Pressure Traffic Signal Control with Adaptive Routing of Vehicles

Calin Belta

June 3, 2016

Panos Papadimitratos

Associate Professor

KTH

Secure Communication in Wireless Networks

Ioannis Paschalidis

June 10, 2016

Panos Papadimitratos

Associate Professor

KTH

Security and Privacy for Emerging Large-Scale Mobile Systems

Ioannis Paschalidis

August 18, 2016

Mario Caselli

PhD student

University of Twente

Specification Mining for Intrusion Detection in Networked Control Systems

Manuel Egele

September 23, 2016

Saswati Sarkar

Professor

University of Pennsylvania

The Economics of Interaction Among Heterogeneous Providers in a Non-Neutral Network

Ioannis Paschalidis

Tingting Xu

October 7, 2016

Lucy Pao

Professor

University of Colorado, Boulder

Controlling Wind Turbines and Wind Farms for Utility Grid Reliability

Sean Andersson

Yue Zhang

October 14, 2016

Lucy Pao

Professor

University of Colorado, Boulder

Control of Atomic Force Microscopes to Achieve Faster Imaging

Sean Andersson

Yue Zhang

October 21, 2016

Naomi Leonard

Professor

Princeton University

Human Decision-Making and Multi-armed Bandit Problems

Sean Andersson

Nan Zhou

October 28, 2016

Michael Zavlanos Assistant Professor

Duke University

Intermittent Communication Control in Mobile Robot Networks

Christos Cassandras

Nan Zhou

November 4, 2016

Arindam Banerjee

Associate Professor

University of Minnesota

Learning with Low Samples in High-Dimensions: Estimators, Geometry,

Brian Kulis

Andrew Cutler

November 11, 2016

Benoit Champagne

Professor

McGill University

Janusz Secure MIMO AF Relaying Konrad Design under Imperfect Eavesdropper CSI: A Robust Optimization Framework

Tingting Xu

November 18, 2016

Pradeep Ravikumar

Associate Professor

Carnegie Mellon University

Classification with General Performance Metrics

Prakash Ishwar

Tingting Xu

December 2, 2016

Johnathan Petit

Senior Director of Research for Security Innovation

Security Innovation

Connected and Automated Vehicles: Security and Privacy Challenges

David Starobinski

Nan Zhou

DATE

SPEAKER

TITLE

AFFILIATION

TALK TITLE

FACULTY HOST

STUDENT HOST

December 2, 2016

Shiv Vitaladevuni

Senior Manager in Machine Learning

Amazon, Alexa

Building Alexa

Venkatesh Saligrama

Andrew Cutler

December 9, 2016

Irad Ben-Gal

Visiting Professor

Tel Aviv University Stanford University

Smart City Modeling of Personal Mobility Behavioral Patterns

Michael Caramanis

Andrew Cutler

February 3, 2017

Maria Gonzalez

Associate Professor

MIT

Big Data to Tackle Urban Challenges

Ioannis Paschalidis

Nan Zhou

February 13, 2017

Subhrakanti Dey

Professor

Uppsala University, Sweden

Ioannis Performance Analysis of Paschalidis Remote Estimation and Control Subject to Packet Loss and Quantization Noise

Taiyao Wang

February 17, 2017

Alberto Bemporad

Professor

IMT Institute for Advanced Studies Lucca

Recent Advances in Embedded Model Predictive Control

Christos Cassandras

Nan Zhou

February 21, 2017

Subhrakanti Dey

Professor

Uppsala University, Sweden

Event-triggered Remote Estimation with Packet Loss in the Presence of an Eavesdropper

Ioannis Paschalidis

Nan Zhou

March 16, 2017

Liang Zheng

Postdoctoral Research Associate

Princeton University

Understanding Cloud Pricing

David Starobinski

Taiyo Wang

March 17, 2017

Pulkit Grover

Assistant Professor

Carnegie Mellon University

Coded Computation

Bobak Nazer

Yue Zhang

March 24, 2017

Daniel Liberzon

Professor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Entropy and minimal data rates for state estimation and model detection

Alex Olshevsky

Yue Zhang

March 31, 2017

Murti Salapaka

Professor

University of Minnesota

Manipulation and Interrogation of Matter at the Small Scale Enabled by a Controls and Systems Perspective

Sean Andersson

Rebecca Swazek

April 14, 2017

Lav Varshney

Assistant Professor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

On Data-Driven Creativity

Vivek Goyal

Yue Zhang

April 21, 2017

Ulugbek Kamilov

Research Scientist

Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory

SEAGLE: Robust Computational Imaging under Light Scattering

Vivek Goyal

Yue Zhang

April 28, 2017

Lee Jones

Professor Emeritus

University of Massachusetts, Lowell

Mathematical connections between optimal robust network control and statistical analysis of tabular data

Mark Kon

Nan Zhou

May 5. 2017

Gordon Wetzstein

Assistant Professor

Stanford University

Computational Near-eye Displays: Engineering the Interface between our Visual System and the Digital World

Bobak Nazer

Yue Zhang

Boston University Division of Systems Engineering Annual Report, 2016â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2017

VISITING COMMITTEE MEMBERS TAMER BASAR Director, Center for Advanced Study; Swanlund Endowed Chair, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering; CAS Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Center for Advanced Study; Research Professor, Coordinated Science Laboratory; Research Professor, Information Trust Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign DIMITRIS BERTSIMAS Boeing Professor of Operations Research and Co-Director, Operations Research Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

YU-CHI (LARRY) HO Professor Emeritus, Harvard University; Chief Scientist and Chaired Professor, Center for Intelligent and Networked Systems, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China KIRK E. JORDAN IBM Distinguished Engineer, Data Centric Solutions, IBM T.J. Watson Research; Chief Science Officer, IBM Research UK; Member, IBM Academy of Technology

P. R. KUMAR University Distinguished Professor and College of Engineering Chair in Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University

MARK T. MAYBURY Vice President and Chief Security Officer; Director, NIST National Cybersecurity FFRDC

STEFAN MIESBACH Vice President and Director, Unify Inc., Service Practice Circuit

ROBERT R. TENNEY Former Vice President, BAE Systems Advanced Information Technology

PRAVIN VARAIYA Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California, Berkeley

Boston University Division of Systems Engineering Annual Report 2016–2017 © 2017 Boston University Photography: Boston University Photo Services, except where otherwise noted. Content: Cheryl Stewart, Elizabeth Flagg, Ruth Mason, SE Staff, SE Faculty and CISE Staff Graphic Designer: Tess Mattern This report provides a description of the instructional and research activities of the Division of Systems Engineering at Boston University during the 2016-2017 academic year. Instructional activities are reported from the Fall 2016 through Summer 2017 semesters while scholarly activities and budget information are reported from July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2017. Boston University’s policies provide for equal opportunity and affirmative action in employment and admission to all programs of the University. For more information or to download this report as a PDF, please visit our website at www.bu.edu/se. Front cover—The atomic force microscope (AFM) is a powerful tool for looking at structure and dynamics in systems with nanometer-scale features. Imaging rates, however, are very slow due to the mechanical nature of the microscope, limiting its utility. Professor Andersson and his students apply concepts from systems and control and estimation theory to develop novel approaches to acquiring information using the instrument, leading to improvements in imaging rates by an order of magnitude or more. (left to right) Xi Yu (PhD student), Professor Sean Andersson. Photo credit: Dave Green Page 8 photo—Professor Christos Cassandras and graduate students in the CODES lab. Photo credit: Dave Green Page 14 photo—Graduate students in the Robotics lab. Photo credit: Dave Green Page 22 photo—Professor Andersson and students in his lab. Photo credit: Dave Green Back cover, top photo—BU graduation, May 2017 (left to right) Professor Sol Eisenberg, Sepideh Pourazarm (SE PhD, 2017), Professor Christos Cassandras Back cover, bottom photo—BU graduation, May 2017, Professor Hua Wang (second from right) with SE PhD graduates (left to right) Elli Ntakou, Yuting Chen, Sepideh Pourazarm, Eran Simhon

Boston University Division of Systems Engineering Annual Report, 2016–2017