The 50 Most Innovative Computer Science Departments in the U.S.

Read all about it at Computer Science Degree Hub.

Spoiler: MIT is number 1 ;)

Thesis Defense

My Doctoral Thesis defense is approaching... it will be on Tuesday, June 17th 2014, 10:00 at PA-3 (Level -1 at IST's Math Building).

Scalable and secure RFID data discovery

The combined use of Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP) and Supply Chain Management (SCM) systems has greatly improved the efficiency of supply chains. Further improvements require a deeper connection between the virtual and physical worlds. Automatic Identification technologies, like radio-frequency identification (RFID), allow identification data about tagged physical objects to be collected continuously by readers deployed across locations in the supply chain. This data is stored and managed using traceability systems to allow efficient answers to traceability queries, like Track and Trace.

A practical traceability system should address both the scale and data visibility problems. The system should perform adequately for the number of physical objects flowing in the supply chain; and it should protect the sensitive business data from unauthorized access.

The original contributions of this dissertation are a quantitative assessment framework, called TrakChain, that compares traceability systems for given supply chain scenarios; and a supply chain authorization language that can be used to define and enforce data visibility restriction policies. The results are illustrated with examples from several industries and a case study in the Pharmaceutical supply chain.

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Descoberta de dados RFID de forma escalável e segura

Os sistemas ERP (Enterprise Resources Planning) e SCM (Supply Chain Management) trouxeram grandes melhorias ao funcionamento das cadeias de fornecimento. Para continuar a melhorar é necessária uma maior ligação entre os mundos virtual e físico. Aqui, as tecnologias de identificação automática por rádio-frequência (RFID), permitem que dados de identificação de objectos físicos etiquetados possam ser recolhidos continuamente por leitores instalados em localizações relevantes (fábricas, armazéns, centros de distribuição, etc). Os dados são guardados e geridos por sistemas de rastreabilidade que permitem dar resposta a interrogações, tais como Localizar e Rastrear.

Um sistema de rastreabilidade prático deve tratar os problemas da escalabilidade e da visibilidade dos dados. O sistema deve ter um desempenho adequado ao número de objectos físicos que circulam na cadeia de fornecimento; e deve proteger os dados de negócio de acessos não autorizados.

As contribuições originais desta dissertação são as ferramentas de avaliação quantitativa, que permitem a comparação de sistemas de rastreabilidade para diversos cenários de cadeias de fornecimento; e uma linguagem de autorização que pode ser usada para definir e aplicar políticas de restrição da visibilidade de dados. Os resultados são ilustrados com exemplos de várias indústrias e com um caso de estudo da indústria Farmacêutica.

Breakfast Before the MOOC

Thomas L. Friedman

February 19, 2014
NYT

Beginning March 2, Prof. Hossam Haick, will teach the first ever massive open online course, or MOOC, on nanotechnology in Arabic. What’s more interesting, though, he explained to me the other day over breakfast is some of the curious email he’s received from students registering for his MOOC from all over the Arab world. Their questions include: Are you a real person? Are you really an Arab, or are you an Israeli Jew speaking Arabic, pretending to be an Arab? That’s because Haick is an Israeli Arab from Nazareth and will be teaching this course from his home university, the Technion, Israel’s premier science and technology institute, and the place we were having breakfast was Tel Aviv.

His course is entitled Nanotechnology and Nanosensors and is designed for anyone interested in learning about Haick’s specialty: “novel sensing tools that make use of nanotechnology to screen, detect, and monitor various events in either our personal or professional life.” The course includes 10 classes of 3 to 4 short lecture videos — in Arabic and English — and anyone with an Internet connection can tune in and participate for free in the weekly quizzes, forum activities and do a final project.

If you had any doubts about the hunger for education in the Middle East today, Haick’s MOOC will dispel them. So far, there are about 4,800 registrations for the Arabic version, including students from Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Algeria, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, Yemen, the United Arab Emirates and the West Bank. Iranians are signing up for the English version. Because the registration is through the Coursera MOOC website, some registrants initially don’t realize the course is being taught by an Israeli Arab scientist at the Technion, said Haick, and when they do, some professors and students “unregister.” But most others are sticking with it. (MOOC’s have just started to emerge in the Arab world via Coursera, edX, Edraak, Rwaq, SkillAcademy and MenaVersity — some with original content, much still translated.)

Asked why he thought the course was attracting so much interest in the neighborhood, Haick said: “Because nanotechnology and nanosensors are perceived as futuristic, and people are curious to understand what the future looks like.” And because nanotechnology “is so cross- and multi-disciplinary. ... It offers a large diversity of research opportunities.”

Haick, 38, whose Ph.D. is from the Technion, where his father also graduated, is a science prodigy. He and the Technion already have a start-up together, developing what he calls “an electronic nose” — a sensory array that mimics the way a dog’s nose works to detect what Haick and his team have proved to be unique markers in exhaled breath that reveal different cancers in the body. In between that and teaching chemical engineering, the Technion’s president, Peretz Lavie, suggested that Haick lead the school into the land of MOOCs.

Lavie, Haick explained, “thinks there is a high need to bring science beyond the boundaries between countries. He told me there is something called a ‘MOOC.’ I did not know what is a MOOC. He said it is a course that can be given to thousands of people over the Web. And he asked if I can give the first MOOC from the Technion — in Arabic.”

The Technion is funding the project, which took nine months to prepare, and Haick is donating the lectures. Some 19 percent of the Technion’s students today are Israeli Arabs, up from 9 percent 12 years ago. Haick says he always tells people, “If the Middle East was like the Technion, we would already have peace. In the pure academy, you feel totally equal with every person. And you are appreciated based on your excellence.” He adds without meaning to boast, “I have young people who tell me from the Arab world: ‘You have become our role model. Please let us know the ingredients of how we become like you.’ ”

I know what some readers are thinking: nice bit of Israeli propaganda, now could you please go back to writing about Israel’s ugly West Bank occupation. No. This story is a useful reminder that Israel is a country, not just a conflict, and, as a country, it’s still a work in progress. It has its lows, like the occupation and economic discrimination against Israeli Arabs, and its highs, like the collaboration between Haick and the Technion, which is providing a tool for those in the Arabic-speaking world eager to grasp the new technologies reshaping the global economy. Those, like members of the B.D.S. — boycott, divestiture, sanctions — movement who treat Israel as if it is only the sum of how it deals with the West Bank and therefore deserves to be delegitimized as a state, would do well to reflect on some of these complexities.

For me, though, Haick’s MOOC is also a reminder of what an utter waste of money and human talent has been the Arab-Israeli conflict. Look how eager all these young Arabs and Persians are for the tools and resources to realize their full potential, wherever they can find that learning. Arab dictators so underestimated their people for so long. That’s what fueled the Arab awakening. It makes you weep for the wasted generations and pray this will be the last of them.

What's coming to Higher Education

Here is a short summary of the Horizon Report 2014 Higher Education Edition that I received via Prof JLB.
You'll find much more information in the full report.

Key Trends Accelerating Higher Education Technology Adoption

Fast Trends: Driving changes in higher education over the next one to two years
> Growing Ubiquity of Social Media
> Integration of Online, Hybrid, and Collaborative Learning

Mid-Range Trends: Driving changes in higher education within three to five years
> Rise of Data-Driven Learning and Assessment
> Shift from Students as Consumers to Students as Creators

Long-Range Trends: Driving changes in higher education in five or more years
> Agile Approaches to Change
> Evolution of Online Learning


Significant Challenges Impeding Higher Education Technology Adoption

Solvable Challenges: Those that we understand and know how to solve
> Low Digital Fluency of Faculty
> Relative Lack of Rewards for Teaching

Difficult Challenges: Those we understand but for which solutions are elusive
> Competition from New Models of Education
> Scaling Teaching Innovations

Wicked Challenges: Those that are complex to even define, much less address
> Expanding Access
> Keeping Education Relevant


Important Developments in Educational Technology for Higher Education

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less
> Flipped Classroom
> Learning Analytics

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years
> 3D Printing
> Games and Gamification

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years
> Quantified Self
> Virtual Assistants

Lessons learned from MITx’s prototype course

Lessons learned from MITx’s prototype course - MIT News Office

Last December, MIT announced the creation of MITx, an ambitious project to recreate the MIT classroom experience online; in March, the MITx prototype course — “Circuits and Electronics,” or 6.002x in MIT’s course-numbering system — debuted. In May, MIT and Harvard University jointly announced the creation of edX, an organization that will further develop the MITx platform and enable other universities to use it as well. As MIT and Harvard gear up to offer new edX courses in the fall, the edX team is taking stock of its experience with 6.002x and beginning to incorporate what it learned into the system’s design.

(...)

Students preferred the hand-drawn diagrams by a substantial margin. “It lets you pace yourself,” Agarwal says. “The PowerPoint is going to flash a picture on the screen, and you don’t develop the idea in the same way that you develop the idea by drawing a picture on the chalkboard.”

Similarly, Agarwal says, several weeks into the course, after canvassing student responses to the course, the MITx team begin posting videos in which the course teachers worked problems out onscreen, rather than just presenting students with completed solutions — a feature that is certain to become a staple of future edX courses. “We learned a lot about how to do a course like this,” Agarwal says. “Clearly, that is influencing us a lot in where we go from here.”