2019 ASPiRe Symposium Research Projects

Fred DeMatteis School of Engineering and Applied Science

ASPiRe Advanced Summer Program in Research

HOFSTRA·

FRED DEMATTEIS SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING AND APPLIED SCIENCE

ASPiRe Symposium Hofstra University 208 Adams Hall Streaming Live: http://tiny.cc/DeMatteisSchool

August 28, 2019 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This is the fourth annual Advanced Summer Program in Research (ASPiRe) Symposium to be hosted by the Fred DeMatteis School of Engineering and Applied Science and I am pleased that thirty students have participated. A key component in its success and growth is the most generous financial support it receives from distinguished benefactors of the DeMatteis School.

This year special recognition is due to: Mr. John D. Cameron, Jr., P.E.

Mr. Thomas J. Sanzone ‘82

Mr. Michael P. Delaney ‘85

Mr. Paul R. Saueracker ’78

Mr. James K. Donaghy ’90

Northwell Health

Dr. Ronald T. Piervincenzi ’93

Thornton Tomasetti Foundation

Dr. Sina Y. Rabbany Their support of these exceptional researchers is of immeasurable value to the students themselves and adds luster to all our educational endeavors.

Sina Y. Rabbany, PhD Dean Fred DeMatteis School of Engineering and Applied Science

TABLE OF CONTENTS Presentation Schedule ....................................................................................................................................3 Structural and Mechanical Assessment of Decellularized Umbilical Arteries .................................................4 Promoting Cell Adhesion on Arterial Extracellular Matrix ...............................................................................4 Using Stereolithographic 3D Printing to Produce More Physiologically Accurate Biocompatible Materials ...............................................................................................................................5 Keratin Protein Purification Through Liquid Chromatography ........................................................................5 Characterization of the Rheological Properties of Keratin Biomaterials .........................................................6 Ultrasonic Quantification of Osteoporosis in Bovine Femoral Head ...............................................................6 Experimental Testbed of a Cognitive-Radio Communication System Prototype............................................7 Design Project: Design and Fabricate a Water Pump Testing Station ...........................................................7 Experimental Investigation of Control on Aerodynamic Flow Separation .......................................................8 Biomedical Robotics Project ...........................................................................................................................8 Wound Closure Image Processing .................................................................................................................9 Automatic Classification of Rhetorical Roles for Sentences Using Machine Learning ...................................9 Natural Language Processing, Legal Documentation and Conversational Depth........................................10 Virtualization Overhead for Multi-Threaded Applications: Remaining Challenges .......................................10 Improving Quality of Service (QoS) of Multi-Tenant GPU Clouds Enabled by Passthrough........................11 Investigating Techniques for User Tracking Through Mobile and Web Applications ...................................11

Profiling Social Media Users.....................................................................................................................12 FWENN: F etal W eight E stimation using Deep N eural N etworks ..................................................12 Visual Learning Curves for American Sign Language Using Virtual Reality ................................................13 A Methodology For Rapid Deployment of Suspended Footbridges..............................................................13 Vortical Structure Interaction of Tandem Delta Wings ..................................................................................14 Cellular Vortex Shedding from Linearly Tapered Finite Cylinders ................................................................14 Dynamic Isolation and Data Processing for Low-Frequency (0-20 Hz) Vibration Experiments ...................15 Systems Biology Analysis of Temporal Dynamics that Govern Endothelial Response to Cyclic Stretch ..........................................................................................................................................................15 Observation of the Nature of the Human Umbilical Vein Endothelial Cell Cytoskeleton ..............................16

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TIME 1

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STUDENT Melanie Singh Dr. Nicholas Merna Vanessa Wong Dr. Nicholas Merna Zachary Weiss Dr. Edward Currie Dr. Antonio Checco Victoria Khaimov Dr. Roche deGuzman Elizabeth Civetti Dr. Roche deGuzman

PROJECT TITLE Structural and Mechanical Assessment of Decellularized Umbilical Arteries Promoting Cell Adhesion on Arterial Extracellular Matrix Using Stereolithographic 3D Printing to Produce More Physiologically Accurate Biocompatible Materials Keratin Protein Purification Through Liquid Chromatography Characterization of the Rheological Properties of Keratin Biomaterials

Jay Shah Mason Mitchell Ultrasonic Quantification of Osteoporosis in Bovine Femoral Head Dr. Sleiman R. Ghorayeb Alex Arthur Dr. Wing Kwong Robyn Alma Dr. Lynn Albers Brian Tavella Dr. Alexander Pesch Brian Kreidberg Dr. Edward Currie Dr. Yimin Zhao Travis Shen Dr. Edward Currie

Experimental Testbed of a Cognitive-Radio Communication System Prototype Design Project: Design and Fabricate a Water Pump Testing Station Experimental Investigation of Control on Aerodynamic Flow Separation Biomedical Robotics Project Wound Closure Image Processing

Break - Lunch

11:45 12

12:45

Jonathan Montag Justin Cabot-Miller Automatic Classification of Rhetorical Roles for Sentences Using Machine Learning Dr. Krish Pillaipakkamnatt

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1:00

Justin Cabot-Miller Dr. Krish Pilliapakkamnatt Natural Language Processing, Legal Documentation and Conversational Depth Dr. Simona Doboli

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Jason Jackrel Dr. Jianchen Shan Youssef Elmougy Dr. Jianchen Shan Edden Kashi Dr. Angeliki Zavou Danny Pires Daulet Diyarov Evan Blake Shelby Mitchell Dr. Angeliki Zavou Alex Speicher Daniel Dimijian Dr. Oren Segal Dr. Andrew Rausch, (Northwell) Alyssa Pancho Alejandro Mato Michael Cariaso Dr. S. Rojas-Murillo Laurie Elkowitz Nicholas Belitsis Dr. Edward Segal, P.E. Frank Tricouros Dr. John Vaccaro Nicholas Torres Dr. David Rooney Dr. John Vaccaro

Virtualization Overhead for Multi-Threaded Applications: Remaining Challenges Improving Quality of Service (QoS) of Multi-Tenant GPU Clouds Enabled by Passthrough Investigating Techniques for User Tracking Through Mobile and Web Applications

Profiling Social Media Users

FWENN: F etal W eight E stimation using Deep N eural N etworks

Visual Learning Curves for American Sign Language Using Virtual Reality

A Methodology For Rapid Deployment of Suspended Footbridges Vortical Structure Interaction of Tandem Delta Wings Cellular Vortex Shedding from Linearly Tapered Finite Cylinders 3

ASPiRe Group Photo

1 Researcher: Melanie Singh

Advisor: Dr. Nick Merna

Structural and Mechanical Assessment of Decellularized Umbilical Arteries Coronary artery disease kills around 400,000 Americans annually. Severe cases are treated with coronary artery bypass grafts, obtained from autologous vessels, such as the saphenous vein. Some patients lack viable vessels and must consider using synthetic or naturally derived grafts. Umbilical arteries were isolated from discarded umbilical cords and then decellularized to create a substrate suitable for tissue engineering of a non-thrombotic, patent vascular graft. Vessels were decellularized in different solutions to determine which method would best maintain the structural and mechanical integrity of the tissue while successfully removing cells. One batch of arteries underwent a 24 hour treatment in a CHAPS (3-((3cholamidopropyl) dimethylammonio)-1-propanesulfonate) buffer (8mM CHAPS, 1M NaCl, and 25mM EDTA in PBS), followed by sodium dodecyl sulfate buffer (1.8mM SDS, 1M NaCl, 35mM EDTA in PBS) for 24 hours. Vessels were treated in M199 basal media for 48 hours. The second condition consisted of a 96 hour treatment with 2% sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) buffer in PBS. Processed vessels were rinsed thoroughly to remove the decellularization solutions and sterilized in ethanol. Histological staining was performed on the decellularized vessels to analyze the tissue structure and cell content.

Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) analysis of the Sirius Red stains allowed for the quantification of collagen fiber density. FFT analysis of collagen density suggests that the CHAPS condition most closely resembles that of the intact tissue. Intact vessels had an average burst pressure of 13.03+/-5.02 PSI. The CHAPS condition had an average burst pressure of 18.63+/-1.36, while the SDS condition had an average of 11.65+/-2.75 PSI. This shows that SDS detergents degraded the collagen structure of the tissues (Figure 1), resulting in decreased mechanical strength of the vessel and lower burst Figure 1: H&E Histology (40x) of (A) Intact, (B) pressures. CHAPS appears to be the preferred decellularization method for the CHAPS, and (C) SDS treated umbilical artery creation of viable grafts because it maintains the structural and mechanical integrity of the tissues while successfully removing cells. To create a functional vascular graft for implantation, the scaffolds must maintain its structural and mechanical integrity, while still supporting reendothelialization. In a separate study, we examine cell adhesion and proliferation on these decellularized vessels.

2 Researcher: Vanessa Wong

Advisor: Dr. Nick Merna

Promoting Cell Adhesion on Arterial Extracellular Matrix Coronary heart disease is a prevalent health issue in America which may require the application of vascular bypass grafts for treatment. Unfortunately, the saphenous veins found in patients are not always suitable for bypass procedures and thus, there has been an increasing demand for alternative sources of grafts which are readily accessible, nonimmunogenic, and do not elicit thrombosis. Human umbilical arteries can provide the extracellular matrix (ECM) required to create such a scaffold for vascular repair. However, acellular scaffolds are prone to thrombosis. As such, our two main objectives were to confirm whether a basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) treatment could enhance endothelial cell adhesion on arterial grafts and to compare physical and chemical immobilization of heparin onto the surface of the tissue to promote the binding of bFGF. After decellularizing human umbilical arteries using two different protocols, we divided the tissue into small sheets, performed a 24 hour bFGF treatment, seeded (A) Intact umbilical arteries and umbilical human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC) onto the luminal surface, and used a arteries decellularized by (B) CHAPS and DAPI stain to quantify the density of adhered cells. As a result, we discovered a (C) SDS. Below are DAPI images of (D) CHAPS and (E) SDS conditions without statistically significant increase in endothelial cell adhesion after bFGF treatment. On bFGF treatment, and (F) CHAPS and (G) another set of sheets, we immobilized heparin through physical adsorption and SDS conditions with bFGF treatment. covalent cross-linking, allowed the heparin 48 hours to adhere, and used an antiheparin antibody to quantify the amount of remaining heparin. Analysis of the pixel intensity demonstrated that physically adsorbed heparin remained bound after a 48 hour rinse; however, cross-linked heparin showed significantly less expression. Therefore, while heparin crosslinking was ultimately unsuccessful and further investigation into other immobilization techniques is required, heparin immobilization through physical adsorption alone was still capable of binding heparin to the ECM. In future studies, we intend to physically immobilize heparin, apply a bFGF treatment, and recellularize a whole decellularized umbilical artery for implantation into a small animal model.

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3 Researcher: Zachary Weiss

Advisors: Dr. Edward Currie, Dr. Antonio Checco

Using Stereolithographic 3D Printing to Produce More Physiologically Accurate Biocompatible Materials My research was focused on creating more physiologically accurate materials for cell culture than what is currently widely used. To this end, I worked on using a 3D Stereolithography Printer to extrude tubular structures out of ultraviolet polymerizable hydrogels. Compared to conventional materials, hydrogels are softer and more hydrophilic. My work involved modifying parts and pieces of consumer grade SLA printer (AnyCubic Photon) in order to be able to print the hydrogels, as well as creating and optimizing a solution from which the hydrogels would be polymerized.

In terms of modifications to the printer setup, changes needed to be made to the platform and resin vat. A smaller platform was designed and printed using conventional UV curing resin and the same consumer grade SLA printer. A specially treated glass microscope slide was temporarily fixed to the custom platform for hydrogel printing. A PDMS slab using the stock vat as a mold was made, and a hole was cut out in the center. This decreased the overall useable size of the vat allowing for less solution to be A printed hydrogel used to determine needed for each print, decreasing waste. the smallest printable hole Several technical issues including gel adhesion to the platform, bubbles forming in the print, print deformation, leakage, and others, were successfully addressed in order to create high quality prints.

Future research will focus on culturing cells on the hydrogels, subjecting cultured cells to flow stress inside hydrogel microchannels, and fabricating hydrogel structure of various stiffnesses.

4 Researcher: Victoria Khaimov

The AnyCubic Photon consumer grade printer used

Advisor: Dr. Roche de Guzman

Keratin protein purification through liquid chromatography 80 Biomaterial extracts from hair samples (KTN) Protein elution are mixtures of keratins, keratin-associated 85 Buffer Salts 70 proteins (KAPs), and other hair components. melanin ' For downstream applications in tissue 60 engineering and regenerative medicine, and for 65 purified basic science understanding, keratin proteins keratins 50 marker require further purification. In this study, [kDa] solubilized KTN samples in different basic pH 45 150 40 buffers plus glycerol, nonionic detergents, and 100 dimers 75 dithiothreitol (DTT) reducing agent were run unbound monomers 50 30 25 using the AKTA Pure 25 L (GE Healthcare) proteins 37 liquid chromatography (LC) system with anion 20 exchange (AIEX) column. At pH 10 (Figure) 5 and pH 7 conditions, protein peaks were eluted 10 using linear gradients of NaCl at approximately 0 50 100 150 0.5 M and 0.2 M, respectively (the higher the -15 0 pH the stronger the negative charges of Elution Volume [mL] keratins). Gel electrophoresis of the eluate showed the existence monomers (40-60 kDa), dimers (80-120 kDa), and multimers, consistent with the expected molecular weights (MW) of keratin proteins. However, lower MW signals eluted as well, indicating contamination with KAPs. Further refinement of the AIEX methods and subsequent sequential purification using other LC techniques: hydrophobic interaction (HIC) and gel filtration (GF) will be conducted for successful isolation of keratin proteins.

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5 Researcher: Elizabeth Civetti

Advisor: Dr. Roche de Guzman

Characterization of the Rheological Properties of Keratin Biomaterials Crude keratin (KTN) biomaterials, extracted from .00 liquid gel human hair through reduction chemistry, have ;,> E:;: 3.50 multitude of potential applications in the medical and u 0 pharmaceutical industries due to their accessibility Ir) 3.00 and intrinsic biocompatibility. In this study, KTN ~ ...... liquids and gels were evaluated for their rheological t'll 2.50 I ......

I properties using a DHR-2 rheometer (TA Instruments) I t'll 2.00 I with cone-plate and parallel plate geometries, to infer I ~ I the underlying molecular structures and dynamic I 1.50 I interactions. It was found that KTN solution exhibited I Q a non-Newtonian thixotropic or pseudoplastic I c.- 1.00 I behavior (shear thinning), characteristic of high I I 0.50 molecular weight (MW) polymers. Increasing KTN I concentration led to a sigmoidal viscosity response ----- ~ 0.00 (Figure) leading to gelation. Addition of glycerol to 0 20 40 60 80 100 KTN increased the viscosity (and MW), likely due to KTN Concentration [mg/mL] increase in free thiols that formed interchain disulfide bonds at the basic pH. Frequency sweep oscillation at the linear viscoelastic region (LVR at 5% strain) demonstrated that KTN gels with increasing concentration resulted in decreasing phase angle (δ) and increasing storage (elastic) modulus (G’). KTN MW was approximated by the G’ and loss (viscous) modulus (G”) values. Further investigation includes the testing of other substances for KTN crosslinking, aiming to further improve the mechanical and strength properties of KTN biomaterial formulations.

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6 Research Team: Jay Shah, Mason Mitchell

Advisor: Dr. Sleiman R. Ghorayeb

Ultrasonic Quantification of Osteoporosis in Bovine Femoral Head The goal of our research during the ASPiRe Program was to test the ability of ultrasound imaging techniques to quantify the degree of bone degradation that occurs from the degenerative disease called Osteoporosis. If feasible, using ultrasound would be a safer and cheaper alternative to quantify bone health. For our experiments, trabecular bone samples were obtained from the femoral head of a Bovine femur and prepared by cutting the sample into cubes, which helped maintain accuracy and precision throughout our experiments. The samples were exposed to 1.8% Formic Acid at 10-minute increments, from 0-80 minutes. These increments ultimately increased the severity of degradation the bone sample experienced, thus accurately mimicking the different levels of Osteoporosis. The samples were then immersed in degassed distilled water. A scanning acoustic microscope (OKOS VUE 400-P) with a 10MHz transducer was used to capture the B-scan images of the samples at each of the time intervals. These images were then processed using a Matlab program to determine the samples percent echogenicity. These values were then compared with actual physical bone measurements of percent bone content. Results confirmed the hypothesis that a decreasing trend existed in % bone while an increasing trend in % porosity was observed, which correlated with the increase of acid exposure.

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7 Researcher: Alex Arthur

Advisor: Dr. Wing Kwong

Experimental Testbed of a Cognitive-Radio Communication System Prototype With recent advancement of 5G technologies, wireless communication networks are expected to grow exponentially and create massive traffic load and spectrum scarcity. Cognitive radio (CR) has recently become an important technology for 5G networks because it can support a dynamic multiple-user environment to alleviate these problems. The channelhopping (CH) rendezvous protocol in CR-based networks is receiving attention due to its various advantages. In the CH protocol, the selection of rendezvous (frequency) channels among mobile devices is dynamically and distributively governed by their assigned CH sequences. Since 2016, our research team has published over ten IEEE journal and conference articles in the fields of CR technologies and designs of CH sequences that can optimize spectral efficiency, carry out quick and frequent rendezvous, support a large number of mobile devices, and enhance throughput.

To have a platform of demonstrating our published results, this project implements an experimental testbed of a CRbased communication system prototype using the contemporary technology of software defined radio (SDR).

Manufactured by Analog Devices, PlutoSDR is a low-cost RF/SDR device that is configurable using Matlab programming environment. In the testbed, three PlutoSDR devices are individually programmed to function as two radio-frequency (RF) transmitters and one RF receiver. The transmission/reception frequency (channel) of each device at a given time interval is independently controlled by its assigned CH sequence. Three asynchronous CH sequences, which cycle through three frequencies in their unique patterns, are designed for the devices so that the two transmitters can communicate with the receiver independently without the need of coordination or synchronization. Data packets are transmitted to the receiver when the two transmitters take turn to hops onto the reception frequency of the receiver. At the end of this project, the testbed is expected to be operational for preliminary bit-error-rate measurement and will become a valuable validation tool of our future research in the fields of CR technologies and designs of CH sequences.

8 Researcher: Robyn Alma

Advisor: Dr. Lynn Albers

Design Project: Design and Fabricate a Water Pump Testing Station ENGG 16, Engineering Design, is a first-year engineering course designed to introduce students to the engineering design cycle through hands-on activities and a design challenge. In one activity, students fabricate a small pump and determine its efficiency by testing the amount of water and height to which it can pump. Upon completing this activity, students are able to safely operate machinery and hand tools in the machine shop and workshop. Throughout the process, students build self-efficacy and engineering identity, some handling machinery for the first time. A safer and better way to test the pumps was needed hopefully reducing the testing time for each group by 50%.

Based on limited storage, the task involved creating a compact, portable container to house the materials needed to test the pump. The container also needed to be easy to transport. Initial constraints included the need to house multimeters, wires, a power source (12V battery), a place to easily and safely secure the pump, containers for water, all without exposing the student to bare wires thereby promoting student safety.

In order to complete this design project, eight Knowledge and Skill Builders (KSBs) were employed: Pump Fabrication, Pump Testing, Poster, AutoCAD, Design Cycle, Circuits and Power, Journal, and Laser Cutter. Three iterations of the design cycle were needed to achieve the current prototype (See Figure.) which will be used in ENGG 16 in Spring 2020.

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9 Researcher: Brian D. Tavella

Advisor: Dr. Alexander H. Pesch

Experimental Investigation of Control on Aerodynamic Flow Separation Flow separation over airfoils results in a loss of lift production by the airfoil. The present study investigates the possibility to mitigate the separation by matching the frequencies of air flow with high frequency vibrations introduced by a motor actuating a flat plate. The studies conducted this summer are a continuation of the research that took place last year in which base measurements were taken and fit with a simple linear feedback model for the aerodynamic torque. This year a novel nonlinear model which incorporates the discontinuity of flow separation in it is developed. The novel model is based on a Goman-Khabrov dynamic stall model and modified to be applicable to higher frequencies than currently available in literature. The nonlinear model also includes a state vector that describes the onset of separation. Therefore, the developed model can be used to formulate a control system which minimizes the separation state variables. In addition a new test rig has been constructed in order to more closely represent airfoils used in the aerospace industry. The new test rig also includes a dynamic pressure sensor forward of the separation field which can then be used to actuate a control surface at the trailing edge of the airfoil. The next steps are to perform similar system identification experiments as for the previous test rig and experimentally demonstrate the subsequent synthesized control.

10 Researcher: Brian Kreidberg

Advisors: Dr. Edward Currie, Dr. Yimin Zhao

Biomedical Robotics Project This summer I worked on making a robot that seals wounds with magnets. I made a user interface with a program called RQT. The user interface included controls for the motors an image box to view live feed from the camera. It also had a widget to view a point cloud of the wound. Another part of the project I did this summer is I made a program to find an ellipse of best fit given a set of 3 dimensional points. This program was made to give the robot a path around the wound so that the robot knows where to place the magnets. I also made a program that gets a plane of best fit given a set of 3d points. Given a point the program finds the 10 closest points to it. Then using those points it gets the equation of the plane of best fit. The reason this program needed to be created is so that when the robot places the magnets it can come in at the normal to the skin. Part of making these programs was learning how to use a software called Ros which stand for Robot Operating System. It is a software used widely in the industry of robotics. Ros allows different programs to communicate with each other. For both of these programs I had to make something called a publisher node which sends messages to other programs. Another program I made detects the center of laser dots with a camera. Using where the lasers are in the camera plane in relation to one another I was able to determine with depth of the lasers. To make this program I had to make something called a subscriber node which takes a Ros publisher image and feeds it into the program. I also designed a 3d model of the robot to using a 3d modeling software called blender. This was done so that later that model can be animated to simulate the robot. I also helped make another simulations tool that can be directly communicated to by the Ros system called a URDF file. The URDF file is a simpler version of the robot than the blender model was and is not to scale like the blender model was. In the future the blender model will be used, but for now the URDF will be used because it is easier to interface with Ros. I also designed a part to hold the lasers using blender and 3d printed it. Overall, I learned many skills that will help me later on with my career.

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11 Researcher: Travis Shen

Advisor: Dr. Edward Currie

Wound Closure Image Processing The objective of this work was to explore ways to filter images of artificial lacerations in order to get the exact shapes of the lacerations and then test the techniques developed on images of real wounds. The initial direction was to filter the images using popular edge detection algorithms. The primary method that was used was a technique known as “canny” edge detection. This method works well on the images that have an acceptable amount of noise, however, it does not perform well under certain situations. Some of these situations would be, if the edges of a wound are overly thick or too thin, if the texture of the surrounding skin/clothing is mixed with the wound, or if the texture inside the wound is too close to the edges, or any combination thereof. The results of only using the canny edge detection algorithm were not ideal considering the amount of noise present in the images being processed. By adding the application of Gaussian filtering there was some success in filtering out most of the noise, but unfortunately, it erased parts of the wound as well.

Reconstructing part of the wound that was missing to maximize the accuracy was then undertaken. The problem of missing edges was solved, but the extra small noise still posed a potential problem. Instead of reconstructing part of the wound, it may be possible to reconstruct the whole wound by checking each individual pixel of the wound to make sure that there is only one line employed showing the accurate position of the wound. This approach successfully re-created the clear wound, however, another issue arose. In effect, closed tissue shapes that were connected to, or inside of the edges of the wound, began to show up. The pixel algorithm detects and reconstructs any closed shape wound, however, if some tissues in the wound are also closed shapes, they will show up as well. Currently, work is underway to address this issue.

The algorithm has also been applied to images of actual human lacerations. The results were somewhat surprising because the blood on the laceration affected the wound shape. The color detection algorithm was then used to distinguish the wound from all other noises. This part of the exploration is on-going, making sure that it will work on all other types of wounds.

12 Research Team: Jonathan Montag, Justin Cabot-Miller

Advisor: Dr. Krishnan Pillaipakkamnatt

Automatic Classification of Rhetorical Roles for Sentences Using Machine Learning The purpose of this study was to write an algorithm which could most accurately label different types of sentences within legal documents. The highest accuracy scores were achieved by utilizing machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Natural language processing (NLP) is a branch of artificial intelligence that helps computers understand, interpret and manipulate human languages such as english in our study. Throughout our research several python libraries for machine learning and NLP algorithms were needed including the Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK), Vader Sentiment Analysis and Scikit-Learn. Scikit-Learn is an open source machine learning tool in python made to be simple and efficient for data mining and data analysis. Sentiment analysis is the process of computationally identifying and categorizing opinions expressed in a piece of text. This lets our program reads a sentence and tell us if it was a positive, negative, or neutral statement. Once we perform the sentiment analysis we receive back a number from the range negative one to a positive one showing how negative or positive the statement was. After this we created a program which could take these numbers and then place them on a scale from one through ten and depending where it was on a scale it received a different tag in the JSON file. Using sentiment analysis we were able to improve our accuracy by over four percent.

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13 Research Team: Justin Cabot-Miller, Jonathan Montag

Advisors: Dr. Krishnan Pillaipakkamnatt, Dr. Simona Doboli

Natural Processing, Legal Documentation and Conversational Depth In these separate research projects, I worked with both Dr. Doboli and Dr. Pillaipakkamnat. Both teams used natural language processing to better understand and analyze text, with two very different end goals.

Dr. Doboli and I looked at posts in a typical online discussion format; people could "upvote" posts and reply to them, as well as post new things at any time. The goal of this project was to see what made certain posts develop into conversational threads and what made conversations more successful than others. We used techniques that come from unsupervised learning -- clustering the conversations and the posts into different groups based on different attributes such as replies, votes, etc... to see if any attributes stuck out to us. We found that the length of an idea and the depth of a conversation seemed to be correlated strongly. And that the conversations seemed to be clustered into 4 different types, with the outliers being the longest conversations.

Dr. Pillaipakkamnatt, Jon and I worked with legal documents. When the Hofstra Legal Clinic assists certain people with their cases it is required to annotate the documents relevant to the case. However, these documents manually are annotated sentence-by-sentence, a time-consuming process that we're attempting to speed up by creating a program to annotate them using machine learning and natural language processing.

This was a multi-tiered project. First, it was required to clean the data and see if there was any extraneous information that we could delete (number, punctuation, etc...). Secondly, we looked at the parts of speech of words in the sentences to see if different types of sentences had different distributions of types of words. We also used information not present in the sentences themselves, but instead, document-specific information such as paragraph location, sentence length, and distribution of words. All of this culminated in making and ensembling multiple models to predict sentences' types. We were able to achieve approximately 88% accuracy. The next phase of this project is the analysis of documents to find similar documents such that a legal professional using our program could find pertinent information to their case.

14 Researcher: Jason Jackrel

Advisor: Dr. Jianchen Shan

Virtualization Overhead for Multi-Threaded Applications: Remaining Challenges With the maturity of hardware-assisted virtualization, the virtualization overhead imposed on each individual thread is low.

Hardware support, such as PLE, together with enhancements in software systems, such as PV-spinlock and halt-polling, have significantly reduced the impact of virtualization on the synchronization and communication between threads.

However, it is still major overhead slowing down multi-threaded execution. The overhead comes mainly from three sources: switching vCPUs, handling IPIs coordinating vCPUs, and user-level spinning that cannot be easily removed. This project aims to answer two questions: 1) what is the performance impact of virtualization on multi-threaded computation in virtualized platform with the latest hardware support, and 2) how different virtualization overhead sources impede multithreaded computation from gaining full speed on virtualized platforms. Targeting the first question, we measure the virtualization overhead for computation-intensive applications that are designed for multicore processors. We show that some multicore applications still suffer significant performance losses in virtual machines. Even with hardware assistance for reducing virtualization overhead fully enabled, the execution time may be increased by more than 162% when the system is not over-committed, and the system throughput can 162 119 70 l Thread 16thread i:=J be reduced by 63% when the system is over60 32thread 64thread so committed. To answer the second question, we profile 40 the multi-threaded execution in the virtualized platform 30 20 to quantify the virtualization overhead caused by 10 virtual machine monitor involvement for different .di .di ,IJJ,,~~nlJl.il 0 -10 sources (e.g., switch vCPUs and handling IPIs). We also calculate the extra CPU cycles spent in the virtual -20 machine to estimate the extra user-level spinning cost.

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15 Researcher: Youssef Elmougy

Advisor: Professor. Dr. Jianchen Shan

Improving Quality of Service (QoS) of Multi-Tenant GPU Clouds Enabled by Passthrough GPU-accelerated cloud has become the mainstream with explosive demand from applications such as deep learning.

Many studies have been conducted to improve GPU virtualization technology to increase efficiency while sharing GPU among multiple tenants. Little attention has been paid to the performance of GPU instance using passthrough technique.

The Quality of Service (QoS) of GPU in such instance is assumed to be guaranteed since the GPU is dedicatedly attached to the instance without being shared. However, through some motivating experiments illustrated in the following figures, we show that the passthrough-attached GPU could be severely underutilized in the multi-tenant server, and the GPU utilization can be degraded up to 30x when compared to the GPU instance running in the dedicated server. The key observation is that the multi-tenant server GPU instance would still share the multicore CPU with other instances for higher system throughput and lower cost. A typical GPU application, such as NAMD in our motivating experiment, would prepare the data and the task (i.e., the GPU kernel) on CPU and transfer them to the GPU to launch the kernel. However, the interference from other instances on the CPU side could delay the dispatch and response of the GPU kernel, and cause low GPU QoS. To mitigate this problem, application characteristics would be analyzed to identify the performance bottleneck, based on which the system level solution, such as an amendment in the priority of processes, would be proposed.

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16 Researcher: Edden Kashi

Advisor: Dr. Angeliki Zavou

Investigating Techniques for User Tracking Through Mobile and Web Applications Over the past couple of years there has been a renewed focus on how companies are able to collect users’ personal information and make it available to marketers. User data is used to feed algorithms that create targeted ads, tailor news recommendations, and sometimes vary prices of online products. In the hopes of regaining their customers’ trust, companies constantly update their (rarely read) privacy policies. Even so, the average user still has little understanding of how their data is collected through their online activity and the use of their mobile devices.

In this project we explored the latest popular technologies for user tracking, the web- and Bluetooth- beacons, in order to understand how much information about users can be gathered without their knowledge as well as how and if this tracking can be limited. From our first experiments, we were able to locate the IP address of the users, details of the device they used and could place a cookie on their machine without their knowledge just by having a tiny transparent graphic image on the webpage they visited. We also gathered device information using Bluetooth beacons scanning software (RadBeacon, BlueCap, nRF Connect, BLE Scanner). This is similar to the tracking technique used by retailers’ mobile applications that are installed by users to shop and get discounts/coupons while they visit the retailer’s stores. The beacons can be used to track the user’s activity throughout the store and log their purchase-behavior by their location and where they spent their time while being in a certain distance from the store.

The second focus of this project was to investigate the information that is being sent out by mobile devices while they are not being used. We discovered that thousands of requests are being sent from our mobile devices all hours of the day but noticed that most data were sent and received during the night-time when most users are expected to be asleep. Some of this traffic is indeed authorized through the applications’ privacy policies, but would a request to Amazon’s website in China count as authorized? Our future goal for this work is to build solutions that prevent this level of tracking or at least makes users aware of it.

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17 Research Team: Daulet Diyarov, Danny F. Pires, Evan Blake, Shelby Mitchell

Advisor: Dr. Angeliki Zavou

Profiling Social Media Users Social media networks have become a nearly ubiquitous element of our everyday lives, providing an easy platform for users from all demographic characteristics to voluntarily share their personal thoughts and stories (i.e., comments, likes, check-ins, etc.) as well as a lot of their personal identifiable information (PII). Unfortunately, few users seem to be aware of the dangers that emerge by revealing their opinions/preferences and/or enabling geo-location tagging on their social media timeline as well as how seriously their privacy and online anonymity can be affected by this behavior.

This research project aims to investigate how much information can be obtained about a particular individual using only their social media data and whether it is possible to construct accurate “social profiles” for this particular individuals. Data from the Twitter micro-blogging service was used as our starting point. The prominent approach adopted for the construction of the “social profiles” involve different machine learning algorithms mostly for content analysis of the tweettext. The “social profiles” consist of predictions regarding the location, age-range, job-field and the overall sentiment analysis of the social media users used for our testing. Publicly available Kaggle-datasets as well as our own manuallylabeled Twitter datasets were used for the training and testing of the ML-models.

18 Research Team: Alex Speicher, Daniel Dimijian

Advisors: Dr. Oren Segal (Hofstra) Dr. Andrew Rausch (Northwell)

FWENN: F etal W eight E stimation using Deep N eural N etworks

Fetal weight estimation is an important part of perinatal medical care. It allows detecting abnormal pregnancy conditions early on and applying medical care effectively. If we are to rely on fetal weight estimates for proper medical care, the ability to accurately estimate fetal weight is of great importance. Recent advances in Artificial Neural Network research and the abundance of accurate data from multiple sources is allowing us to explore new ways of estimating fetal weight more accurately. In this work we will explore the possibility of generating more accurate fetal weight estimations by employing deep neural network architectures trained with large amounts of anonymized patient data. This work is a collaboration with Dr. Andrew C Rausch, at the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell.

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19 Research Team: Michael Joseph Cariaso, Alejandro Mato, Alyssa Pancho

Advisor: Dr. Salvador Rojas-Murillo

Visual Learning Curves for American Sign Language Using Virtual Reality

Hearing loss is a predominant problem in America. A report from the World Health Organization estimated that 900 million people worldwide will have disabling hearing loss by 2050. According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, 90% or more deaf children are born from hearing parents. Having a deaf child has a major impact on family life, with communication being one of the first aspects to be impacted, as hearing parents are often unfamiliar with American Sign Language (ASL). Despite the technological advances in ASL education, it still poses several challenges for deaf children and hearing parents, including a variety of ASL training factors such as location, schedule, and financial cost.

An empirical behavioral study was conducted with twenty untrained participants performing the ASL alphabet for eight consecutive trials using virtual reality and eye-tracking. After completing the experiment, participants reduced the fixation duration by 51.90% and observation count by 45.69%. The representations of the fingers acquired 66% of the fixation duration. In addition, the observation proportion for the fingers’ visual instructions decreased from 59% (Trial 1) to 41% (Trial 8). An ANOVA analysis showed unequal variance for ASL Signs, and a power regression showed different learning rates for all signs. Our experimental setting successfully tracked and identified the key visual areas when learning the ASL alphabet.

A virtual system was successfully designed to allow the tracking and identification of the key visual areas that drive the observers’ attention when learning the ASL alphabet. The results indicate clear learning curves, the identification of key visual areas and the impact of practice on these key visual areas when learning. Experiment participants identified the representations of the virtual and reference fingers as the most relevant key visual areas, with practice allowing participants to learn the ASL alphabet and reduce their observation proportion on the reference representation.

20 Research Team: Nicholas Belitsis, Laurie Elkowitz

Advisor: Edward M. Segal, Ph.D., P.E

A Methodology For Rapid Deployment of Suspended Footbridges The goal of this project is to develop a suspended rope footbridge that can be rapidly deployed in walking networks damaged by floods and other disasters. The footbridge will also be able to be constructed from only one side of the crossing for scenarios in which the other side is not initially accessible. The design incorporates unconventional anchorages such as trees or emergency support vehicles and can be used temporarily in rescue situations as well as for longer durations of time while more permanent connections are being established. The research consisted of the development of a physical 40-foot span proof-of-concept prototype rope footbridge deployed between two trees. The bridge utilizes a polyester net held up by two Tenex-TEC polyester ropes. Polyester ropes and netting are lightweight and extremely durable (even when wet), making them an ideal choice for this project.

The ropes are anchored to one of the trees using a ratchet strap (which will also facilitates in the disassembly processes) and the ropes are tensioned using two come-alongs which are placed between each of the two Tenex-TEC ropes and the ends of the ratchet straps. At the opposite end, the net is supported by two ropes which wrap around a tree with a Y-branch. A 2-foot wide polyethylene mat featuring a water-resistant vinyl covering can be laid within the net to create a more rigid deck that is easier to walk on then the net alone. Deployment relies in part on a DJI Phantom 4 Pro quadcopter drone outfitted with a 3D-printed spool attachment. The drone tows a string over the crossing, wraps around the desired tree, and returns to the starting location. This string is then used to pull across the Tenex-Tec ropes which in turn are used to pull across the net into the final configuration.

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21 Researcher: Frank A. Tricouros

Advisor: Dr. John C. Vaccaro

Vortical Structure Interaction of Tandem Delta Wings Delta wings are highly swept wings with triangular planforms. They are primarily used for supersonic flight but must be designed to fly subsonically as well. Delta wings exist on fighter aircraft, space shuttles, and missiles. The flow field over the upper surface of slender delta wings at subsonic speeds and moderate angles of attack is dominated by two leading edge vortices. The flow from the bottom surface tends to curl up and around the sharp leading edge, separating. The primary vortex is formed from this separated flow near the leading edge. A secondary, counter-rotating vortex forms underneath the primary vortex, this secondary vortex is closer to the leading edge and creates a highly complicated threedimensional flow field. A tandem delta wing setup consists of two wings, one behind the other. In order to study the flow field surrounding the tandem delta wings, an experimental apparatus was designed. The tests will be conducted in a subsonic wind tunnel with freestream Reynolds numbers ranging from 4 × 10 4 to 4.6 × 105, based on the upstream root chord. The experimental apparatus allows for the independent changing of angle of attack for each wing as well as varying the streamwise spacing between the two wings. Aerodynamic forces and moments will be measured using load cells at various relative angles of attack and streamwise spacing. In addition, particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurements will be taken in order to visualize the vortices on the upper surfaces of both wings. PIV is a non-invasive optical flow measurement technique where a fluid is seeded with neutrally buoyant tracer particles that are illuminated by a laser light sheet and photographed. For the tandem delta wing setup, two cameras at 90° from each other will capture image pairs of the illuminated M tracer particles separated by a small known time step. An auto-correlation of the image pairs provides three-dimensional velocity measurements. The light sheet will be traversed in multiple streamwise positions generating a three-dimensional flow field. Multiple configurations of streamwise spacing and relative angles of attack will be studied in order to maximize subsonic aerodynamic performance and to understand the complex interaction of the vortices formed over each wing.

22 Researcher: Nick Torres

Advisors: Dr. David M. Rooney, Dr. John C. Vaccaro

Cellular Vortex Shedding from Linearly Tapered Finite Cylinders A circular cylinder, exposed to a 2-dimensional flow, will shed vortices along its span. The frequency of the vortex shedding directly correlates to factors such as geometry and flow conditions. A constant diameter cylinder will generate a number of discrete span wise cells with constant frequencies. In the case of the constant diameter cylinder, geometry conditions such as aspect ratio play a major role in the number of cells formed from vortex shedding. However, a constant diameter cylinder has an infinite taper ratio since base and tip diameters are the same value. This study aimed at examining how introducing finite values of taper ratio to a cylinder with a given aspect ratio, affects how the cell structure of the vortex shedding develops.

Experimental data was collected utilizing an Aerolab EWT. A wind tunnel wall was manufactured to fit a base plate in which the tapered cylinder was mounted. A 6-inch tapered cylinder, with a base diameter of 0.25 inches and a tip diameter of 0.125 inches was used to collect data. A single hot-wire anemometer was used in conjunction with LabVIEW software to obtain values of velocity as well as the spectral density of the velocity readings. The number of cells generated from vortex shedding is now a function of both taper ratio and aspect ratio, whereas the circular cylinder of constant diameter is only dependent on aspect ratio.

Future investigations include the usage of various tapered cylinders and seeing how the number of cells formed varies from differences in aspect ratio, taper ratio, or both. In addition to that, studies will be conducted to determine how vortex shedding is affected by placing two tapered cylinders in line with one in another and then rotating them at different angles of attack.

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23 Researcher: Jake Haney

Advisor: Dr. Manuel J. Miranda

Dynamic Isolation and Data Processing for Low-Frequency (0-20 Hz) Vibration Experiments To perform low-frequency (0-20 Hz) vibration experiments, a heavy steel-framed table was chosen as a relatively stiff support for the Quanser Shake Table II; however, the table support needed to be modified to avoid it interacting and interfering with the experiments in the frequency range of interest. After measuring the natural frequencies of the table, it was determined that stiffness and damping needed to be increased. To add damping, pads of neoprene were placed underneath each leg of the table. A bracing layout was then designed to add stiffness. This layout kept in mind the need for access to the computer, power unit, and and controls, which are all placed on the underside of the table. Aluminum angles were cut into the appropriate brace shapes and fastened to the table using washers cut from viscoelastic sorbothane for extra damping. After each addition of damping or stiffness, the natural frequency of the table was measured again. Ultimately, the natural frequency of the table was raised significantly to allow for vibration experiments to be performed without significant dynamic interference in the frequency range of interest.

In addition, a MATLAB code was created to process data files recorded by PhidgetSpatial Precision 0/0/3 Hi-Res triaxial accelerometers, which are used in all the experiments. The code allows for user-selected inputs, including desired sampling rates (up to 1000 Hz), as well as relevant metadata. Before processing, the code applies calibration constants, interpolates the data to ensure sampling uniformity, trims undesired portions of the data, removes means, and generates time series and FFT plots of the raw data. Processing the data involves decimation to the desired sampling rate, and application of acausal Butterworth low- and high-pass filters, with filter order and cutoff frequencies specified by the user.

Next, the code generates time series, FFT, and PSD plots of the filtered data, as well as comparison plots between raw and filtered data. Finally, the code saves all data as a MATLAB data structure, in a binary file, for later use. The code has been working very well with the experiments that have been performed with the accelerometers.

24 Researcher: Michael Lai

Advisor: Dr. Sina Y. Rabbany

Systems biology analysis of temporal dynamics that govern endothelial response to cyclic stretch Endothelial cells in vivo are subjected to a wide array of mechanical stimuli such as cyclic stretch. Using primary human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs), we determined the role of equibiaxial cyclic stretch in vitro with magnitudes of 10% and 20%, representative of physiological and pathological conditions, respectively. Notably, 10% stretch is associated with an atheroprotective endothelial phenotype, while 20% stretch is associated with an atheroprone endothelial phenotype. Here, a systems biology-based approach is used to present a comprehensive overview of the functional responses and gene regulatory networks that characterize the transition from an atheroprotective to an atheroprone phenotype in response to cyclic stretch. Following analysis of mRNA sequencing data, we identified six key endothelial responses to pathological cyclic stretch: cell cycle regulation, interferon response, cholesterol homeostasis, bile acid metabolism, fatty acid metabolism, and mTOR signaling driven by a regulatory network of eight transcription factors. Our study highlights the dynamic regulation of several key stretch-sensitive endothelial functions relevant to the induction of an atheroprotective versus an atheroprone phenotype and lays the foundation for further investigation into the mechanisms governing vascular pathology. This study has significant implications in the development of treatment modalities for vascular disease.

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25 Researcher: Dominick Romano

Advisor: Dr. Sina Y. Rabbany

Observation of the Nature of the Human Umbilical Vein Endothelial Cell Cytoskeleton

Endothelial cells are found in the inner lining of every vessel in an animal closed vascular system. They form the basic structure of the entire human vascular system and control the exchange of nutrients and waste between *somatic tissues and the blood. Like all other cells, endothelial cells contain a cytoskeleton of microfilaments made of actin, intermediate filaments made of various proteins, and microtubules made of tubulin dimers. In particular, the endothelial cell cytoskeleton contributes to, structural integrity, cell shape, signaling, cell motility, and wound healing. This study observed the nature of the human umbilical vein endothelial cell cytoskeleton by knocking out microfilament and microtubule polymerization with Cytochalasin D and Nocodazole respectively. Then, we observed the morphology of cellular structures through AFM imaging. Cell movements were tracked with scratch assays from time lapse microscopy.

Cell stiffnesses and topographies were obtained from Atomic Force Microscopy.

Confocal Microscopy. Brightfield microscopy demonstrates captured morphology of control, cytochalasin, and nocodazole treated samples.

AFM Imaging. High resolution images of the morphological artifacts have been observed. Cytochalasin flattens and rounds out cells, where nocodazole treatment is less aggressive on morphology.

Immunoflurescent imaging. Shows a difference between actin in Cytochalasin D, Nocodazole and control cells.

Demonstrates a difference in Tubulin fibers in the same treatment set.

AFM Indentations. Stiffnesses of each sample are taken. 50ng/ml treatment of cells with nocodazole are shown to have a lower stiffness than the control group. eScratch Assay. Controls closed the scratch after 24 hours. Cytochalasin treated groups did manage to close the gaps, but it took twice the time to close compared to the controls. Nocodazole treated cells move much slower and did not close the wound gap within 48 hours.

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