Hello World - CPE

HELLO WORLD Computer Engineering | Cal Poly | Fall 2018

Crash Avoidance Student project aims to save animals and protect people

HELLO WORLD

“Using technology to help people”

INSIDE: P. 3 Alumnus Brady Aiello knows

the value of hard work P. 4 Parallel computing powers

study of Zika virus drugs P. 6 Cassidy Elwell seeks

women for cybersecurity careers

P. 7 Tina Smilkstein launches

group to promote diversity

RADIATION DETECTION Dosime, a company that sells personal radiation detection devices, tasked computer engineering capstone students to integrate the company’s API (application programming interface) into an Amazon Alexa Skill and a Google Action.

As a result, users can access radiation information from their personal dosimeters via any voice command assistantenabled device.

For more information, contact John Oliver at jyoliver@calpoly.edu or 805-756-5434.

PHOTO BY MOLLY MORRIS

COVER

ANIMAL-VEHICLE COLLISION DETECTION SYSTEM Each year, more than 1 million animal-vehicle collisions occur in the U.S., taking more than 200 human lives and costing more than $1 billion in property damage. There are many efforts in place that attempt to mitigate the interaction between cars and animals, but they are either costly or ineffective. This project tackles the issue from a different perspective: warn animals when the vehicle is coming, rather than warn drivers to “use caution.”

Students Lexa Hall, Kody Dangtongdee, Cole Havener and Lincoln Tran developed a system to scare animals off roads when cars approach. Using a series of car detection devices and signal amplification nodes, the system sends an ultrasonic alarm from one device to another.

Hearing the device makes animals so uncomfortable, they leave the area. When chained together, the nodes can span an area of 1,000 feet, giving the animal plenty of time to avoid danger.

For more information, contact Andrew Danowitz at adanowit@calpoly.edu or 805-756-2756.

PHOTO BY JOANNE MENDOZA • PHOTOSHOP TREATMENT BY JOANNE MENDOZA | DONNA AIKEN

The School of Hard Knocks

PHOTO BY DENNIS STEERS

2018 graduate Brady Aiello worked as a manual laborer for a decade; A Martini scholarship helped him earn a degree.

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orking construction, it wasn’t uncommon for Brady Aiello to pull a draining 8 a.m.-midnight shift.

Once he even worked a 23-hour day.

“It’s very physically exhausting,” he said of the work. “It made my lower back really sore. My hips were messed up. My knee. It gave me lots of new and exciting pains.”

Through most of his 20s, Aiello worked as a manual laborer, performing demolitions, painting, plumbing, electrical work and lots of flooring and carpet installation. But after earning his master’s degree in computer science this spring, Aiello is looking forward to work that entails fewer hammers and X-acto blades and more Androids and artificial intelligence.

“There are a lot of fun aspects of technology,” Aiello said.

His collegiate journey, however, wasn’t always fun, entailing a decade of hard jobs, 11 years of schooling and struggling to make ends meet with his new family. While his story might seem unique, it’s not uncommon for students to have money concerns – and the accompanying stress that goes along with that.

After high school, the San Jose native initially studied Spanish language and fine arts at UC Davis. While he did well, he dropped out and worked in construction for the next five years. But in 2009, the economy faltered.

“The jobs kind of dried up,” he said. “You weren’t guaranteed work every day, and when you did work, you weren’t going to get paid very well.”

While continuing to work construction, he enrolled at Cuesta

College, eventually studying electrical engineering. He met his wife, Erin, also a Cuesta student, in 2012.

Because he continued to work, Aiello attended Cuesta five years before transferring to Cal Poly in 2014. He performed his last manual labor job on Aug. 3, 2013 – the day before marrying Erin and becoming a stepfather to her young son.

At 29, he stood out from the other students in his classes.

“Sometimes people thought I was a professor,” he said.

Luckily, he found other older students – often former military vets – he could relate to on campus. Meanwhile, he switched majors from electrical engineering to computer engineering.

Erin, who had also transferred to Cal Poly, pursued a degree in biology. To make ends meet, the couple relied on low-income housing, food stamps, odd jobs, a local church food pantry and other assistance.

“It felt really good “The assistance made a huge difference because we could not to graduate. Almost have survived,” Aiello said. “There every weekend has really wasn’t a way for two parents to go to school, raise a child and been completely pay for a place in SLO.” taken up by school Still, the stress and anxiety culminated when Aiello failed his for so long.”

CPE 357 class.

“I fell into a deep depression,” Brady Aiello on the travails he said, noting the family also of being a working student. experienced a couple of deaths around that time. “It was kind of all piling up.”

However, as he pursued counseling through the university’s Health Center, Aiello received unexpected good news – he had been awarded a significant scholarship from the Martini family.

With financial help that allowed him to focus on his studies, Aiello finished his master’s degree in computer science this spring.

“It felt really good to graduate,” he said. “Almost every weekend has been completely taken up by school for so long.”

All those years of hard work finally paid off: In September, Aeillo landed a job as a software engineer with Amazon in Santa Cruz, where his wife is pursuing a doctorate in biology.

While he now works for a prestigious company, whenever he sees someone performing manual labor, he pledges to treat them with dignity, knowing firsthand how hard it is.

“I have a lot of respect for people who do manual labor,” he said. n CAL POLY COMPUTER ENGINEERING | 3

A trio of students help battle the Zika virus using parallel computing

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treamlining a process that could have taken years, a trio of computer engineering students helped researchers identify eight potential drugs last year that can now be tested for efficacy against the devastating Zika virus.

Scott Eagon, an assistant professor of biology, and his team of student researchers in the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department set out to digitally test compounds that could be used to treat Zika, a disease spread by mosquitoes that can cause serious birth defects during pregnancy. In order to improve their chances, the researchers wanted to test a library of 7 million potential drugs, targeting them against a specific protein in the Zika virus.

“If we used a single computer that tested drugs one at a time, this would take more than 20 years of computing,” said Eagon, who focuses on small molecule pharmaceuticals.

The challenge was getting someone in the private sector to run simultaneous computer simulations for them.

“Sadly, running a job of this magnitude would cost more than $10,000,” Eagon said.

Unlike academic researchers, who have to collaborate with professionals outside their universities, pharmaceutical companies usually have all the resources they need to develop drugs in-house, Eagon said. But they are selective in what diseases 4 | CPE.CALPOLY.EDU

“The capstone students I worked with were able to help me complete a job this size in a couple of months. I was blown away by what they were able to accomplish using only Cal Poly resources.”

Scott Eagon, Cal Poly Biology professor, on working with CPE students

they seek to combat.

“No ‘pharma’ company is seriously looking into treating malaria, even though it’s still the No. 1 killer of children under 5,” Eagon said. “This is because no one in wealthy countries gets these diseases, and a good medicine works in a few doses.”

Luckily, Chris Lupo, computer science and software engineeing chair, approached Eagon, asking if he had anything computer engineering students could work on as a capstone project. Eagon said he did, though he kept his expectations low.

“I didn’t think it was likely that they could develop something that could compete with a multinational corporation’s computing service,” he said.

COURTESY PHOTO

Helping Humanity with Mass Computation

Computer engineering students Derek Nola, Lucy Brantley and Dennis Li worked with Scott Eagon of the Cal Poly Biology Department, left, to digitally test compounds that could be used to treat the Zika virus.

COMPUTER VS. MOSQUITO

Once tasked, a trio of students – Lucy Brantley, Dennis Li and Derek Nola – quickly put their knowledge of parallel computing to work.

Typically used when mass computation is needed, parallel computing uses several processors to execute an application or computation simultaneously. It works by dividing the workload between several processors, all of which work through the computation at the same time.

“By using parallelization techniques, we can have multiple computers each test different drugs at the same time, greatly accelerating the testing process,” Eagon said In this case, the technique would take place in familiar territory.

“We had campus computers run his testing software when they weren’t in high demand,” Nola said.

Acting as a crude super computer, the parallel computing setup successfully identified eight avenues for Eagon.

“The capstone students I worked with were able to help me complete a job this size in a couple of months,” Eagon said. “I was blown away by what they were able to accomplish using only Cal Poly resources.”

Currently, Eagon said his team is working on a paper to communicate their results to the scientific community. That will allow others in the academic world to pursue empirical, or physical, testing of the eight drugs.

“There’s no guarantee that the molecules we’ve found will lead to a cure, but the more compounds we can test, the better our chances of finding a cure,” Eagon said.

Even if the findings don’t lead to a cure, the capstone students can say they were involved in efforts to combat Zika.

“No one thinks a topic like ‘parallel computing’ has anything to do with helping humanity,” Brantley said. “But it was tremendously gratifying to know we worked on a project that will make a real difference for people.”

While universities often don’t have high research budgets, she added, they do often have good hardware for students, which can

PHOTO BY DENNIS STEERS

Nola, Brantley and Li used parallel computing to analyze the results of tests on eight potential drugs being developed to combat the Zika virus. Previously, researchers would spend several months in the lab analyzing pathogens to confirm which chemicals are effective in killing them. employed by Cal Poly Computer Engineering students, PHOTO BY time is cut research JOANNE MENDOZA from months to just weeks.

be used for simulations like Eagon’s.

“Anyone who has a bunch of computers can use this system to create a pseudo-cluster and have it be distributed for them,” she said. “The internal layers can be changed to other scientific simulators.” n

“No one thinks a topic like ‘parallel computing’ has anything to do with helping humanity. But it was tremendously gratifying to know we worked on a project that will make a real difference for people.”

Lucy Brantley, CPE student CAL POLY COMPUTER ENGINEERING | 5

HELLO WORLD

WISH scholarship recipient Cassidy Elwell wants more women to pursue cybersecurity careers

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rowing up, Cassidy Elwell enjoyed solving Nancy Drew fornia Cybersecurity Institute, an extension of Cal Poly’s Cybersecomputer mysteries. And as she grew older, she was particu- curity Center. There she helped implement the California Cyber larly drawn to the fictional character Abby Sciuto, the goth- Innovation Challenge, a statewide crime simulation competition fashioned “NCIS” scientist who solved murders with digital forensics, designed to get high school students interested in cybersecurity. For ballistics and DNA technology. that event, she also created digital evidence and assisted in the forWanting to solve crimes and circumvent terrorism, the mation of a realistic storyline.

Bakersfield native attended a digital forensics and cybersecurity “For the CCIC 2018, anything digital was Cassidy’s responsibilsummer academy in Vermont before her senior year in high school. ity,” said John Oliver, an associate professor and director of the com“It was that immersive experience of solving cyber crime with puter engineering program. “Most importantly, Cassidy was able to professional tools and my desire to become a strong woman, who implement the digital evidence without much oversight, and I felt uses her skills in technology to improve others’ lives, that made in- comfortable in her taking the reins.” delible marks on me,” she said.

As that simulation suggests, cybersecurity experts can help solve The Computer Engineering Director Scholarship from the crimes. But keeping up with the latest cyber technology is an ongoWomen Involved in Software and Harding challenge in the field, Elwell said. ware (WISH) not only provides Elwell “It is incredibly difficult to keep up funding to pursue her computer engineer“Overall, a majority of all with the latest cyber technology due to ing degree, it also has connected her with the growing number of threats that recrimes today include a cyber a group of supportive women who share quire prevention and response and the her passions. lack of skilled individuals to create and component, whether it be While cybersecurity is a fast-growing implement this cyber technology,” she unethical hacking or the use field, with a demand for high-paying said. jobs, the number of women entering While cybersleuths have investigated of a laptop or phone for the profession is still noticeably low. everything from local crimes to national Women account for just 14 percent of the security threats, Elwell said she is especommunication, and therefore, U.S. cybersecurity workforce, according cially interested in investigating human require a digital investigation.” to a study presented by the Center for trafficking, crimes against children and Cyber Safety and Education. the use of ransomware to attack healthCassidy Elwell Part of that, Elwell said, might be atcare and other facilities. tributed to the stereotype of the cyber“Instances of these crimes, unfortusleuth as a socially challenged man sitting behind a computer screen nately, are growing, which makes them all the more important to or the prospect of being intimidated by an environment with so few prevent and solve,” she said. “Overall, a majority of all crimes today women. include a cybercomponent, whether it be unethical hacking or the “A variety of factors exist to get more women interested in the use of a laptop or phone for communication, and, therefore require a field,” she said. “These include female role models, support from digital investigation.” peers and colleagues, early exposure to the fields of engineering and Oliver said he can envision Elwell becoming a version of Abby technology, and resources such as education, research, conferences Sciuto, finding clever ways to break encryption or catch cybercrimiand internships.” nals with her knowledge of computing and forensics.

Elwell has taken advantage of several opportunities during her “Cassidy is tenacious,” he said. “She has a clear vision and pureducation, including a job working as a student assistant at the Cali- sues her vision with intelligence, integrity and intent.” n 6 | CPE.CALPOLY.EDU

PHOTO BY JOANNE MENDOZA

The Cyber Challenge

Protecting the Mustang Way Tina Smilkstein launched a diversity group to promote awareness, discussion and action

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ven though she’s white, Tina Smilkstein, an electrical engineering faculty member, spent much of her life as a racial minority in Japan.

And while she has many fond memories of her 20 years in Japan, Smilkstein also faced plenty of discrimination there, which is partly why she empathizes with minorities at Cal Poly.

“I think it gave me insight to how some students, faculty and staff must feel in the present atmosphere on campus and around the country and world,” she said.

In response to racially motivated incidents last year, she formed the Cal Poly EE/ CPE Diversity, Inclusion and Equity Project, which encourages both discussion and action to combat discrimination.

“Our job is to make students feel comfortable and give them the best learning environment we can,” Smilkstein said.

The group, which formed last fall, continues to meet weekly. Through the group, Smilkstein plans to invite guest speakers and create a safe place in one of the engineering buildings. Other goals include starting a workshop on unconscious bias and becoming more vocal and active around issues that impact the students.

“Some of our meetings just turned into discussions about events and how they made people feel,” she said. “And that was really useful and powerful.”

Smilkstein has long been involved with human rights issues.

She grew up in Claremont and began her studies at UC Berkeley; however, a planned three-month trip to Japan wound up lasting lasting over two decades.

While there, she served on a sex workerHIV information hotline during the height of AIDS-related deaths. She also worked on a rape counseling hotline. Meanwhile, she became acclimated to her new country.

“I think I was Japanese in my brain,” said Smilkstein, who earned a degree in business administration there, reading Japanese texts. “I know people looking at me didn’t think so.”

While she studied, worked and lived in Japan, she also suffered from harassment and discrimination based on her gender and race.

“I was asked to leave conferences because I wasn’t Asian,” she said.

“I was the only female engineer at my company and was regularly harassed by the security people.”

As a result of such experiences, when she moved back to the U.S. around 2000 to pursue her doctorate in electrical engineering, she had a different perspective.

“I had been in a place where I had the experience of not being in the majority,” she said.

With that in mind, Smilkstein wants to make sure Cal Poly is proactive in making the campus a comfortable place for students. And she hopes her diversity group can help encourage that.

“The school has to be clear and tough on anyone that doesn’t behave according to the Mustang Way and keep it in the news until as many people as possible get the message,” she said. n

PHOTO BY JOANNE MENDOZA

“Our job is to make students feel comfortable and give them the best learning environment we can.”

Tina Smilkstein CAL POLY COMPUTER ENGINEERING | 7

College of Engineering Computer Engineering Program 1 Grand Avenue San Luis Obispo, CA 93407-0350

AUTONOMOUS ROBOTICS COURSE Computer engineering students Jordan Barham, Brandon Kelley and Nicholas Walker worked on improving a four-week robotics summer course taken by international students at Cal Poly. They developed course content to help students implement sensors and motor controllers capable of autonomously navigating a battery-powered car.

For more information, contact John Oliver at jyoliver@calpoly.edu or 805-756-5434.

PHOTO BY JOANNE MENDOZA

LIGHT UP THE FUTURE

MAKE A GIFT TO SUPPORT COMPUTER ENGINEERING LABS, PROJECTS AND CLUBS Click HERE to make a gift now, or contact Tanya Hauck, assistant dean of advancement, at thauck@calpoly.edu or 805-756-2163.

PHOTO BY KYLE CHAN • PHOTOSHOP TREATMENT BY DONNA AIKEN