Hyunju Kim - US grants

Computer Science (31)

The objective of this project is to develop a Systems Security and Software Security in Senior Projects (S4-SP) program to incorporate aspects of software security, computer, network, operating systems and database security into all phases of capstone projects. The four major goals of the S4-SP program are: (a) develop course modules in the areas of systems security, software security and cryptography; (b) integrate and use the course modules in the Software Engineering and Senior Capstone Project courses; (c) develop a Virtual Security Lab (VS Lab) that can be remotely used by other institutions; and (d) develop a sequence of two elective courses on Systems Security and Advanced Information.

The S4-SP program establishes a model for incorporating aspects of systems security and software security in a capstone project. The security learning modules are self-contained and no prior security background is required. The security control implementations in the Senior Projects are platform-independent.

JSU is a Historically Black University (HBCU) and more than 90% of its students are African-Americans. Other HBCUs and smaller institutions can efficiently incorporate the security modules as an essential component of their undergraduate Computer Science curriculum without requiring a dedicated security course. The Virtual Security Lab is accessible to other institutions at no additional cost.

The project entitled: The SOSS (Student-centered Open Source Software) Community at Jackson State University seeks to establish an Open Source Software (OSS) community run by Computer Science majors. It will enhance students' knowledge and skills in problem solving analysis, solution design, software development, and teamwork and communication. The goal is to educate Computer Science majors through real-world software development activities and produce a well-educated and well-trained workforce. The project will result in a repository and knowledge base of student development projects; workspaces and opportunities for real-world software development in a healthy educational environment; a virtual classroom for students; and the development of an educational model utilizing OSS products and the OSS community.

This project educates African American Computer Science majors and prepares them for graduate school and the workforce. The educational model is transparent and thus can be used and adapted to incubate OSS communities in other disciplines and at other institutions.

From the level of chemical reaction networks within cells to the social structures of higher organisms, biological systems seem to take advantage of distributed computation to perform a myriad of complex functions. However, rigorous quantification of how life stores, processes and propagates information at the various levels of organization observed in biological systems has remained elusive. In this project the PIs will utilize recently developed information-theoretic tools from complex systems research, typically applied to artificial life systems, to assess how a real biological system manages distributed information to perform a collective computational task. This research will provide new applications of mathematical and computational tools for use by scientists and will provide important insights in issues of broader concern such as colony collapse disorder observed in honeybees. The results will be disseminated to the general public through a variety of media as part of the outreach efforts of the PI and Co-Is.

Specifically, the PIs focus on characterizing information storage, processing, and propagation in colonial decision making as a rigorous case-study for understanding the physics of collective computation in living systems. The aim is to address several outstanding questions in insect behavior, by applying a novel theoretical framework treating collective decision making as a computation to the problem of collective nest site choice by the ant Temnothorax rugatulus. To this end, the investigators will implement a novel synthesis of two levels of theoretical investigation, agent-based modeling and information-theoretic analysis of experimental and simulated data sets, with experimental manipulation to determine the mechanisms of information processing among individuals that lead to global, emergent computation in Temnothorax rugatulus colonies. With this novel framework, the PIs will address several important outstanding questions about the physics governing collective choice, including the role of negative feedback and under what conditions collective wins over individual rationality. The research will provide one of the first detailed studies expanding the wealth of knowledge on emergent computation in complex systems to the biological realm. This study will inform our understanding of fundamental aspects of biological computation that will provide new perspectives on the physics of living systems by illuminating how life stores, processes, and propagates information. Due to the ease of manipulation of individuals within eusocial-insect societies, the PIs will be able to probe the minimal set of individual-level features necessary for spontaneous distributed computation.