Boston University College of Engineering • AnnuAl RepoRt 2012–2013

Division of SyStemS engineering

CONTENTS

1 HIGHLIGHTS 1 Message from the Division Head

3 At a Glance

4 Faculty Honors and Awards

6 new positions and promotions

7 Highlighted new Grants

11 FACULTY AND STAFF 11 Appointed Faculty

13 Affiliated Faculty

15 Division Administration

15 CISe Affiliated Staff

15 Division Committees

17 GRADUATE PROGRAMS 17 Graduate program population

18 Graduate Student Funding

19 Degrees Awarded

20 Recruitment

21 Curriculum Development

21 Current Graduate Students

23 Graduate Student Accomplishments

25 RESEARCH 26 Research Highlights

28 Research laboratories

32 the Center for Information and Systems engineering (CISe)

34 CISe Seminar Series — Co-Sponsored with the Division of Systems engineering

36 Visiting Committee Members

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The systems Engineering program during the 2012-13 academic year has maintained its growth in research activities measured through funding levels, publication output, and distinctions for our faculty. The Division has maintained its fruitful collaboration with the Center for information

and systems Engineering (CisE), focusing on a variety of projects that span the modeling, design, analysis, and optimization of human-made and physical systems within a broad array of applications. The Division’s continuously expanding graduate curriculum supports concentrations in Computational and systems Biology, Control systems, network systems, financial Engineering systems, operations Research, and Energy and Environmental systems.

The sE Division currently has 14 appointed faculty members from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Department of Mechanical Engineering, along with 16 affiliated faculty members from the College of Engineering, the College of Arts and sciences, and the school of Management. This year, nathan Phillips, Professor in the Department of Earth and Environment, was added as an affiliated faculty member.

The Division’s 2012-13 enrollment consists of 60 students, including 28 pursuing a PhD degree, 17 pursuing a MEng and 11 pursuing a Ms degree. There were 5 PhD degrees awarded this past year. in the fall of 2012, 7 new PhD students and 7 Ms and 11 MEng students joined the Division with all admitted PhD students supported by fellowships. our continuing PhD students were funded from research grants received by participating and affiliated faculty with a total sponsor commitment of approximately $55M of which about $10M came from newly awarded grants in such cutting-edge areas as atomic force microscopy, medical record

processing for preventive actions, smart cities as cyber-physical systems, tracing the source of bacterial pathogens, and micro-bio-robots.

We are continuing to see a large number of applicants to our PhD, Ms, and MEng programs, totaling 232 for the fall 2013 term. There were 16 fellowship offers made to PhD applicants and we expect 7 fully-supported PhD students to join the Division in september 2013, along with 3 Ms and 7 MEng new students. our students continue to represent a variety of geographical and academic backgrounds, reinforcing the diversity that has been one of the distinguishing characteristics of the Division. We have also made a transition to an all-fellowship system for incoming students aiming to provide maximal flexibility for them during their first year in our program.

The Annual Report provides highlights from the Division’s scholarly accomplishments that include new research and PhD dissertations completed. i would like to call special attention to the distinctions and honors received by several of our faculty and graduate students. The Division has also offered travel awards to several of our PhD students, facilitating their ability to attend prominent international conferences and present their work.

i look forward to a new year as Head of the Division and would like to take this opportunity to thank my colleagues, our students, and our dedicated staff who are contributing to its mission and continuing growth. i hope that this report is an accurate reflection of our academic and research accomplishments over the past year.

Christos G. CassandrasDivision Head

HIGHLIGHTS

Christos G. CassandrasDivision Head

MeSSAGe FRoM tHe DIVISIon HeAD

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3

At A GlAnCe

NUMBER OF STUDENTS ENROLLED 2012–2013

28 – PhD

7 – Ms

17 – MEng

4 – LEAP

4 – Minor

NUMBER OF DEGREES AWARDED2012–2013

5 – PhD

4 – Ms

5 – MEng

2 – Minor

2008–2009

2009–2010

2010–2

011

2011–2012

New Funding(in millions)

Continuing Funding(in millions)

Total Funding(in millions)

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

2012–2

013

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

Book Chapters Journals(refereed)

Proceedings(refereed)

Invited Lectures Abstracts Patents

11

82

129122

136

140

2008–2009

2009–2010

2010–2

011

2011–2012

New Funding(in millions)

Continuing Funding(in millions)

Total Funding(in millions)

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

2012–2

013

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

Book Chapters Journals(refereed)

Proceedings(refereed)

Invited Lectures Abstracts Patents

11

82

129122

136

140

DIVISION OF SYSTEMS ENGINEERING RESEARCH FUNDING

NUMBER OF FACULTY PUBLICATIONS

FACulty HonoRS AnD AwARDS

SeAn AnDeRSSon • 2012 Kern Faculty Fellow, Boston University

JoHn BAIllIeul • Selected as Co-Editor-in-Chief of Springer Encyclopedia of Systems

and Control• Selected as one of three plenary speakers for the 2013 Chinese

Conference on Decision and Control (CCDC)

AZeR BeStAVRoS• Best Paper Award, 2012 ACM/IFIP/Usenix Middleware Conference • BU Ignition Award for Software Inspection and Certification

service, 2013

CHRIStoS CASSAnDRAS• President, IEEE Control Systems Society, 2012• Zhu Kezhen Award, 2012• Plenary/Keynote Speaker, Society of Instrument and Control

Engineers Annual Conference, August 2012 • Plenary/Keynote Speaker, Brazil Automation Conference,

september 2012 • 2012 Kern Faculty Fellow, Boston University• Ignition Award, 2012, Boston University Office of Technology

Development

JAMeS CollInS• 2013 Elected as a Fellow of the Massachusetts Academy of Sciences• 2012 Elected as a Charter Fellow of the National Academy of

inventors• 2012 Elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies• 2012 Sanofi-Institut Pasteur Award• 2012 Elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences• 2012 Innovator of the Year, Boston University • 2012 Kern Faculty Fellow, Boston University

MARK CRoVellA• IETF/IRTF Applied Networking Research Prize, 2013• Best Student (Qi Ding) Paper Award, KDD 2012

pIeRRe Dupont• Finalist for Best Medical Robotics Paper, 2013 IEEE International

Conference on Robotics and Automation

MICHAel GeVelBeR • 2012 Kern Faculty Fellow, Boston University• Member of Aeolus Building Efficiency team which won first prize

in the energy efficiency category of the annual MiT Clean Energy Competition

pRAKASH ISHwAR• Elected Member: IEEE Signal Processing Theory and Methods

(sPTM) Technical Committee (2013–2015)• Associate Editor: IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing (2012–2013)• Co-organizer and Co-chair: Special session on Challenges in

High-Dimensional Learning and Inference: Fundamental Limits and Algorithms, in the iEEE international statistical signal Processing (ssP) Workshop, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 5-8 August, 2012. Co-organizers: W. C. Karl and V. Saligrama (Boston University).

• Chair of Local Arrangements: 2012 IEEE International Symposium on information Theory (isiT)

w. CleM KARl• Selected as Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Image

Processing, 2013

tHoMAS lIttle• Patent Awarded: T.D.C. Little, R. Wagenaar, J. Anthony, and M.

Gingrave, “Lift Monitoring system and Method,’’Patent no. Us 8,149,126 B2, filed January 30, 2009, issued April 3, 2012.

BoBAK nAZeR• National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development

Award (CAREER), 2013–2018• 2013 IEEE Communications Society and Information Theory Society

Joint Paper Award

IoAnnIS pASCHAlIDIS• Distinguished Faculty Fellow, College of Engineering, Boston

University, 2011–2016 • Selected as inaugural Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on

Control of network systems, 2013

ARI tRACHtenBeRG• 2012 Kern Faculty Fellow, Boston University• 2013 ECE Award for Excellence in Teaching

CollInS nAMeD AS nAtIonAl ACADeMy oF InVentoRS CHARteR Fellowonly 98 ACADeMIC InnoVAtoRS eleCteD to HIGH HonoR Excerpt from an article by Mark Dwortzan

The national Academy of inventors (nAi) has elected pRoFeSSoR JAMeS CollInS (BMe, MSe, Se) as a Charter fellow, a high professional distinction that recognizes academic innovators who have created or facilitated outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on society—and have been a named inventor on at least one patent issued by the U.s. Patent and Trademark office (UsPTo).

A pioneer in both synthetic and systems biology, Collins has developed innovative ways to design and reprogram gene networks within bacteria and other organisms to attack tumors, direct stem cell development and perform other desired tasks that could bring about cheaper drugs, more effective treatments of antibiotic-resistant infections, and clean energy solutions. Also a trailblazer in efforts to improve function of physiological and biological systems, he has spearheaded several new medical devices such as vibrating insoles to improve balance in elderly people and a device to treat stroke-induced brain failure.

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Professor James J. Collins (BME, MSE, SE)

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enG’S CollInS eleCteD to InStItute oF MeDICIneExcerpt from an article by Art Jahnke

pRoFeSSoR JAMeS CollInS (BMe, MSe, Se), a William fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor and a College of Engineering professor of biomedical engineering, has been elected to the institute of Medicine of the national Academies. The institute, which advises policy makers and professionals on medical and health issues, announced at its 42nd annual meeting yesterday that Collins is one of 70 new members.

“i am thrilled to be elected to the institute of Medicine and proud to have our lab’s work on antibiotics and antibiotic resistance so honored,” says Collins, whose lab has applied systems and synthetic

biology techniques to better understand how antibiotics work and how antibiotic resistance emerges.

Jean Morrison, University provost and chief academic officer, says the University is extraordinarily proud of Collins’ election to the ioM. “The institute of Medicine is one of the world’s most respected and important scientific organizations,” says Morrison. “Jim’s election is both a reflection of the significance of his contributions and the extraordinary respect that his colleagues have for him. We are thrilled that he has been elected.”

nAZeR wInS nSF CAReeR AwARDExcerpt from an article by Mark Dwortzan

ASSIStAnt pRoFeSSoR BoBAK nAZeR (eCe, Se) has received the national science foundation’s prestigious faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award in recognition of his outstanding research and teaching capabilities. nazer plans to use his CAREER award to explore a novel approach to wireless communication that could lead to substantially higher data rates. The conventional wisdom is that interference between users is a source of noise to be avoided at all costs. for instance, modern wireless systems operate by assigning users to dedicated time or frequency slots. However, interfering

signals are not simply noise: they encode data sent by other users and often have considerable structure. nazer has discovered a technique that can harness the inherent algebraic structure of interference; properly applied, it may eventually enable many users to simultaneously occupy the same channel while operating at extremely high data rates. Assistant Professor

Bobak Nazer (ECE, SE)

pASCHAlIDIS nAMeD eDItoR-In-CHIeF oF new Ieee JouRnAlExcerpt from an article by Rachel Harrington

The Control systems society of the institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (iEEE) has chosen pRoFeSSoR IoAnnIS pASCHAlIDIS (eCe, Se) to be the inaugural editor-in-chief of the journal iEEE Transactions on Control of network systems (TCns). TCns will publish high-quality papers on systems with interconnected components, emphasizing topics related to the control of these systems. The scope of the new quarterly publication will be broad and include topics such as communication networks, cyber-physical systems, biological networks, electric power networks and social/economic networks.

“The launch of this journal is exciting because there is quite a bit of work done at Boston University on networks with innovative and, at the same time, ‘non-traditional’ applications including robot networks, network security, smart cities and networks arising in biological contexts,” said Paschalidis. “This new journal offers a venue for such work, which has so far been missing.”

Paschalidis said that he hopes TCns will become the premier journal for the emerging and growing network systems field. “Having the editorial office located at BU presents opportunities to organize events that bring some of the leaders of this research arena to campus,” said Paschalidis.

Professor Ioannis Paschalidis (ECE, SE)

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tHoMAS lIttle AppoInteD ASSoCIAte DeAn FoR eDuCAtIonAl InItIAtIVeSExcerpt from an article by Mark Dwortzan

Dean Kenneth R. Lutchen has appointed pRoFeSSoR tHoMAS D.C. lIttle (eCe, Se) as the College of Engineering’s Associate Dean for Educational initiatives. Little will be responsible for overseeing, implementing, catalyzing and designing new and existing College-wide and cross-college or school educational initiatives that involve innovation in curriculum design or course delivery in undergraduate, graduate and professional education programs.

“Tom has expertise and passion for emerging educational technologies and digital education methodologies that are anticipated to radically impact engineering education,” said Lutchen. “As associate dean, he will advance new programs with other schools and colleges at BU, continue to advance our professional masters programs, oversee innovative faculty teaching programs and help the college navigate the impact of digital technologies on engineering education.”

new poSItIonS AnD pRoMotIonSARI tRACHtenBeRG pRoMoteD to Full pRoFeSSoRpRoFeSSoR ARI tRACHtenBeRG (eCe, Se), who specializes in enhancing cyber security, says his promotion to full professor of electrical and computer engineering at EnG is an incentive to continue to do groundbreaking research.

nAtHAn pHIllIpS pRoMoteD to Full pRoFeSSoR

The author of dozens of widely cited journal articles and abstracts, pRoFeSSoR nAtHAn pHIllIpS (eARtH & enVIRonMent, eCe, Se), researches plant physiological ecology—specifically how global environmental change may affect the processes by which plants and ecosystems regulate water loss and carbon gain. He is executive director of the sustainable neighborhood Lab at BU.

Professor Ari Trachtenberg (ECE, SE)

Professor Nathan Phillips (Earth & Environment, ECE, SE)

Professor Thomas D.C. Little (ECE, SE)

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HIGHlIGHteD new GRAntS ASSoCIAte pRoFeSSoR SeAn AnDeRSSon (Me, Se) has been awarded a three-year nsf grant in the amount of $240,000 in a collaborative project with Lucy Pao at the University of Colorado in Boulder. The primary research objective of this proposal is to improve the temporal resolution of atomic force microscopy (AfM) through non-raster sampling schemes based on compressed sensing (Cs).

pRoFeSSoR eRIC KolACZyK (MAtH & StAt, Se) has been awarded a five-year grant from AfosR in the amount of $1,142,505. The focus of the project is to pursue a broad-based, multi-faceted program of research to systematically lay key pieces of the statistical foundation necessary to pursue measurement-based systems validation in complex networks.

ReSeARCH teAM AwARDeD $2M nSF GRAnt: BetteR DAtA MAnAGeMent, loweR HeAltHCARe CoStS Excerpt from an article by Rachel Harrington

Today, people with chronic conditions like diabetes are benefitting from real-time monitoring devices like miniaturized implants, home monitoring equipment, and smartphone applications. Unfortunately, even though tracking a person’s symptoms and vitals has improved, hospitals and their medical teams are not ready to benefit from possessing so much personalized health data.

Boston University’s pRoFeSSoR IoAnnIS pASCHAlIDIS (eCe, Se) and Dr. William Adams (BMC) have teamed up with MiT’s Professor Dimitris Bertsimas to develop algorithms that can systematically process all patient data in hospital electronic medical records and personalized health records. These algorithms will be designed to classify patients based on the risk of developing an acute condition

that would require hospitalization. such information can then be used to drive preventive actions.

“What motivated us to start this particular project is the recognition that the Us health care system is extremely inefficient as it is geared toward treating acute conditions,” said Paschalidis. “There are, we believe, tremendous opportunities for preventing the occurrence of these conditions and the expensive hospitalizations they cause.”

To support their work, the national science foundation (nsf) has awarded Paschalidis (Pi), Adams (Co-Pi), and Bertsimas (Co-Pi) a five-year, nearly $2 million grant for the project.

uS ARMy ReSeARCH oFFICe FunDS new ReSeARCH, wHICH CoulD Help tRACe SouRCe oF BIoteRRoR AGentSExcerpt from an article by Mark Dwortzan

Through genetic manipulation or growth in the laboratory, microbes can be engineered for either harmful aims, such as anonymous anthrax attacks, or beneficial purposes, such as vaccines, fuel cells or pollution control systems. A better understanding of how the conditions in which a bacterial cell is grown impact its metabolism and biochemical composition could lead to new tools to help counter potential bioterror threats and advance the development of a wide range of peaceful applications.

now an interdisciplinary team of systems engineers, computer scientists, microbiologists and biochemists—including Boston

University researchers pRoFeSSoR IoAnnIS pASCHAlIDIS (eCe, Se) and Associate Professor Daniel segrè (Biology, BME, MsE, Bioinformatics), as well as researchers at the University of Texas and Harvard University—seeks to establish clear links between bacterial cells’ growth conditions and their resulting composition by developing and testing advanced mathematical methods. funded by a $7.5 million grant from the U.s. Army Research office, the five-year project could lead to new ways to track the source of a bacterial pathogen, and to help discriminate between natural infectious outbreaks and the deliberate spread of pathogens.

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Se/eCe/CS teAM wInS $1M nSF GRAnt wItH uMASS AnD uConn FoR “SMARt CIty” ReSeARCH Excerpt from an article by Mark Dwortzan

imagine driving in a city where you never have to search for a parking spot, traffic tie-ups are rare, and information on nearby accidents is displayed on your dashboard almost instantaneously. if a research team led by pRoFeSSoR CHRIStoS CASSAnDRAS (eCe, Se) achieves its goals, such “smart cities” could become commonplace across the U.s. in the coming decade. The team—which includes pRoFeSSoRS IoAnnIS pASCHAlIDIS (eCe, Se), AZeR BeStAVRoS (CS, Se) and Assaf Kfoury (CS) from Boston University; University of Massachusetts-Amherst Professor Weibo Gong (ECE); and University of Connecticut Professor Robert Gao (ME)—has received a $1 million grant from the national science foundation to create the technological infrastructure for a wide range of smart City applications aimed at reducing the congestion, pollution, fossil fuel consumption, accidents, cost, and sheer inconvenience associated with operating motor vehicles in urban environments.

“our smart City focus has the potential of revolutionizing the way we view the city in the future: from a passive living and working environment to a highly dynamic one with new ways to deal with transportation, energy and safety,” said Cassandras. These new ways include a smart Parking system that assigns and reserves parking spaces based on a driver’s requested destination and price range, a traffic regulation system that dynamically controls traffic lights based on real-time road conditions to improve the flow of vehicles throughout a city, and electric vehicle charging stations where drivers can pay to download electric power to their vehicle from a smart grid—or get paid to upload excess electric power from their vehicle to the grid. The closed-loop system defining a smart City entails not only collecting data from sensors, but also implementing control actions through devices based on intelligent decision making.

To create an infrastructure for these and other smart City applications, the team plans to design a mobile sensor network of motor vehicles, each equipped to collect data from its onboard sensor and quickly transmit it across the network from one vehicle to the next. Using the network, a driver who comes across an accident scene could, for instance, punch a dashboard menu button and transmit the accident location to every other motor vehicle in the network. The mobile sensor network that the researchers envision will collect and exchange data such as accident locations or hazardous road conditions; dynamically allocate resources such as available parking spaces or electric vehicle charging stations; ensure secure and reliable data exchange across the network; and make real-time decisions, such as coordinating sets of traffic lights, without compromising the safety of drivers, bikers or pedestrians. To achieve those objectives, they will advance new sensing, data acquisition, decision-making and dynamic resource allocation capabilities.

The closed-loop system defining a Smart City entails not only collecting data from sensors, but also implementing control actions through devices based on intelligent decision making.

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tHe oFFICe oF nAVAl ReSeARCH FunDS A $7.5 MIllIon pRoJeCt: “utIlIZInG SyntHetIC BIoloGy to CReAte pRoGRAMMABle MICRo-BIo-RoBotS” Excerpt from an article by Art Jahnke, Bostonia

As biologists continue the decades-long race to map the genomes of living things, a group of forward-thinking BU engineers is asking the kind of questions that engineers can’t help but ask: what if we built a different genome? Known as synthetic biologists, they believe that with some skillful genomic tweaks, living organisms, such as cells and microbes, can be put to work doing things that are too dangerous or not even possible for higher life-forms like ourselves.

in the last few years, as computing power has multiplied and the cost of decoding and synthesizing DnA has nose-dived, synthetic biological possibilities have started to look more like probabilities. oil spill cleanup is also high on the things-to-do list for customized microbes. so is weapons detection, which may explain why the office of naval Research is funding a $7.5 million project called Utilizing synthetic Biology to Create Programmable Micro-Bio-Robots. The project, which involves Douglas Densmore (ECE) and two other BU engineers as well as researchers from Harvard, MiT, northeastern, and the University of Pennsylvania, intends to create a dynamic trio of humans, robots, and genetically engineered bacteria, all of which will work together to

detect whatever the bacteria are programmed to detect. That could be explosives or toxins or heat or light. The customized bacteria will talk to one another, and they will report to miniature “chaperone robots,” a mere 10 to 100 centimeters long, that will each control thousands of microbes. finally, the chaperone robots will wirelessly report back to humans.

While all of that sounds fantastical—new life forms reporting to robots reporting to humans—it seems perfectly doable to the BU engineers who are working on the project. They include pRoFeSSoR JAMeS CollInS (BMe, Se, MSe), who is regarded as one of the founders of the field of synthetic biology. Collins will determine the DnA modifications required for the project. ASSoCIAte pRoFeSSoR CAlIn BeltA (Me, Se, BIoInFoRMAtICS) will help design and assemble both the microbiotic robots and the chaperone robots. Densmore will find the best way to assemble and verify the DnA used to enable the microbes to sense specific environmental signals.

LEfT To rIGHT: SE graduate students Yasaman Khazaeni and Sepideh Pourazarm work together with Jens Tonne, visiting researcher. Photo credit: Sepideh Pourazarm

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FACULTY & STAFF

SeAn AnDeRSSonAssociate Professor, MERobotics, control theory, scanning probe microscopy, symbolic-based control• PhD, University of Maryland, 2003• 2012 Kern Faculty Fellow, Boston University• Awarded tenure and promoted to Associate

Professor, 2012• Associate Editor, SIAM Journal on Control and

optimization, iEEE Control systems society and Robotics and Automation society

• 2009 NSF CAREER Award

JoHn BAIllIeulProfessor, ME, ECERobotics, control of mechanical systems, mathematical system theory, information-based control theory• PhD, Harvard University, 1975• IEEE Hendrik W. Bode Lecture Prize, 2011• Fellow of IEEE, Fellow of IFAC, Fellow of SIAM • Inaugural Distinguished Lecturer Series Award,

College of Engineering, Boston University, 2008• IEEE Third Millennium Medal, 2000• Past President, IEEE Control Systems Society

CAlIn BeltAAssociate Professor, ME, Bioinformaticsverification and control of dynamical systems, hybrid systems, symbolic control, robot motion planning and control, gene and metabolic networks• PhD, University of Pennsylvania, 2003• Awarded tenure and promoted to Associate

Professor, 2011• CISE First Prize, BU Engineering and Science Day,

Boston, April 12, 2012 (student poster by Yushan Chen)

• Plenary Speaker, 15th International Conference on Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control (HsCC), Beijing, April 17, 2012

• Associate Editor, SIAM Journal on Control and optimization

• 2008 AFOSR Young Investigator Award• 2005 NSF CAREER Award• 1997 Fulbright Scholar Award

MICHAel CARAMAnISProfessor, MEMathematical programming, control and stochastic systems• PhD, Harvard University, 1976• 2004 BU College of Engineering Service Award• Editor, IIE Transactions in Design and

Manufacturing, 1997–2000• Member, IIE Transactions in Design and

Manufacturing Editorial Board

CHRIStoS CASSAnDRASProfessor, ECE; Division Head, SEDiscrete event and hybrid systems, stochastic optimization, simulation, manufacturing systems, communication and sensor networks, and command control systems• PhD, Harvard University, 1982• President, IEEE Control Systems Society, 2012• Kern Fellowship, College of Engineering, Boston

University, 2012• Plenary Speaker, 24th Chinese Control and

Decision Conference, May 2012• Boston University Office of Technology

Development ignition Award, 2012• 2011 IEEE Control Systems Technology Award• 2011 IBM/IEEE Smarter Planet Challenge, 2nd prize

(student team led by Yanfeng Geng)• Fellow of IEEE• Fellow of IFAC• IEEE Distinguished Lecturer, 2001–2004• Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Transactions on Automatic

Control, 1998–2009• IEEE Control Systems Society Board of Governors• 1991 Lilly Fellow• IEEE Control Systems Society Distinguished

Member Award• 1999 Harold Chestnut Prize • Department Editor, Journal of Discrete Event

Dynamic systems• Associate Editor, International Journal of Intelligent

Computing and Cybernetics and international Journal of BioSciences and Technology

• Past Associate Editor, Automatica and IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control

• Past Editor, Technical Notes and Correspondence, iEEE Transactions on Automatic Control

• Honorary Professor, Huazhong University of science and Technology and Wuhan University of science and Technology

AppoInteD FACulty

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DAVID CAStAÑÓnProfessor and Chair, ECE; Co-Director, CISE; Associate Director, CenSSIS stochastic control, estimation optimization, image understanding and parallel computation• PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1976• Past President, IEEE Control Systems Society (CSS)• IEEE Control Systems Society Distinguished

Member Award• Past Air Force Scientific Advisory Board member• 2007 ECE Teaching Award• Associate Editor, Computational Optimization and

Applications• Past Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on

Automatic Control• ECE Department Chair, 2007–2008; 2010–Present

pRAKASH ISHwARAssociate Professor, ECEstatistical signal processing and machine learning, network information theory coding and computation, secure multiparty computation, visual information processing and analysis• PhD, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign,

2002• Elected Member, IEEE IVMSP Technical Committee• Best Paper Prize, with Kai Guo and Janusz Konrad,

at the 7th iEEE international Conference on Advanced video and signal-Based surveillance (Avss) in september 2010.

• 2007 Dean’s Catalyst Award• 2005 NSF CAREER Award

IoAnnIS pASCHAlIDISProfessor, ECE; Co-Director, CISEsystems and control, networking, applied probability, optimization, operations research, computational biology, and bioinformatics with applications in communication and sensor networks, protein docking, logistics, cyber-security, robotics, the smart-grid, finance• PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1996• Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Transactions on Control of

network systems• Distinguished Faculty Fellow, College of

Engineering, Boston University, 2011–2016• IEEE Control Systems Society, Board of Governors,

2010• Guest Editor, IEEE Transactions on Automatic

Control, special issue on Wireless sensor and Actuator networks

• Associate Editor, SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization, January 2010–present

• Liaison position between the IEEE Control Systems society and the institute for operations Research and the Management sciences (infoRMs), november 2007–present

• Chair, Technical Committee of Networks and Communication systems, iEEE Control systems Society, (January 2006–present)

JAMeS peRKInSAssociate Professor, MEReal-time scheduling and control of manufacturing systems, supply chain management, resource pricing and congestion control in communications networks• PhD, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign,

1993• 2002–2004 Department of Manufacturing

Engineering Excellence in Teaching Award

VenKAteSH SAlIGRAMAProfessor, ECEsystems theory, information and control, statistical signal processing• PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1997• 2005 NSF CAREER Award• 2003 Presidential Early Career Award• 2002 ONR Young Investigator Award• 1997 Outstanding Achievement Award from

United Technologies

MAC SCHwAGeRAssistant Professor, MEDistributed controllers for the deployment of mobile sensor networks, inferring dynamical models of biological group phenomena from data, aggressive multi-robot control over multi-hop networks with time delays, persistent monitoring and persistent environmental sampling with robots• PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009

DAVID StARoBInSKIProfessor, ECEWireless networks; QOS and traffic engineering; network economics; cyber security• PhD, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Israel,

1999• Associate Editor, IEEE/ACM Transactions on

networking• 2010 ECE Faculty Teaching Award• 2004 Department of Energy Early Career Award• 2002 NSF CAREER Award

pIRooZ VAKIlIAssociate Professor, MEMonte Carlo simulation, optimization, computational biology, computational finance • PhD, Harvard University, 1989

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HuA wAnGAssociate Professor, ME; Associate Division Head, SEControl of nonlinear phenomena, intelligent systems and control, complex networks, cooperative control, robotics, and applications in biological, energy and aerospace systems• PhD, University of Maryland at College Park, 1993• 2012 College of Engineering Faculty Service Award,

Boston University• 2000 Cheung Kong Scholar, Ministry of Education,

China and Li Ka Shing Foundation, Hong Kong, China

• 2000 IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems outstanding Paper Award

• 1999 IFAC Congress Best Poster Paper Prize of the fourteenth Triennial World

• Congress of International Federation of Automatic Control (ifAC)

• 1994 O. Hugo Schuck Best Paper Award of the American Automatic Control Council

AFFIlIAteD FACultyMuRAt AlAnyAlIAssociate Professor, ECECommunication networks, performance analysis and optimization, stochastic systems• PhD, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 1996• 2004 Legacy Gift Award, College of Engineering• 2003 NSF CAREER Award

AZeR BeStAVRoSProfessor, Computer Sciencescalable internet protocols and systems, application of game theory to the design of systems and networks, resource colocation and management for cloud computing, virtualization and programming support for cyber-physical systems, compositional analysis and verification of complex systems• PhD, Harvard University, 1992• BU Ignition Award for Software Inspection and

Certification service, 2013• Distinguished Service Award, IEEE and the ACM• United Methodist Scholar/Teacher Award for

2010/2011• 2011 Google Faculty Research Award (with

Evimaria Terzi)• Chair, IEEE Technical Committee on the Internet,

2007–2013• Selected as Distinguished Speaker of the IEEE

Computer society for 2010

JAMeS CollInSProfessor, BME, MSEsynthetic biology, systems biology, noise enhanced sensorimotor function• DPhil, University of Oxford, England, 1990• Fellow of the Massachusetts Academy of Sciences,

2013• Charter Fellow of the National Academy of

inventors, 2012• Fellow of Institute of Medicine of the National

Academies• 2012 Sanofi - Institut Pasteur Award• 2012 Innovator of the Year, Boston University • 2012 Kern Faculty Fellow, Boston University• Elected to American Academy of Arts and

sciences• 2011 World Technology Award for Biotechnology• The Gates Foundation’s Grand Challenges

Exploration Grant• Elected to National Academy of Engineering• Named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute

investigator• Named an inaugural William Fairfield Warren

Distinguished Professor• Received Drexel University’s inaugural Anthony J.

Drexel Exceptional Achievement Award• 2010 Lagrange—CRT Foundation Prize• 2003 MacArthur Fellowship• 2000 BU Metcalf Cup and Prize

MARK CRoVellAProfessor, Computer SciencePerformance evaluation, focused on parallel and networked computer systems, detecting and understanding anomalies in iP networks, efficient network monitoring, network security• PhD, University of Rochester, 1994• Elected Fellow of the IEEE• 2007–2009 Chair of ACM SIGCOMM• Past editor for Computer Communication Review,

IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, Computer networks and iEEE Transactions on Computers

• Fellow of the ACM and IEEE• ACM SIGMETRICS Test of Time Award

pIeRRe DupontAdjunct Professor, ME, BMERobotic and imaging technology for minimally invasive surgery• PhD, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1988• Finalist for Best Paper Award at the IEEE/RSJ

intelligent Robots and systems (iRos ) Conference• Summa Cum Laude Merit Award (student

authored abstract scoring in the top 3% of all submitted abstracts) at 2012 20th Annual international society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (isMRM) Meeting

• Best Medical Robotics Paper Award at the 2012 iEEE international Conference on Robotics and Automation (iCRA)

14

MICHAel GeVelBeRAssociate Professor, ME, MSEDevelopment of control and sensing systems for electrospinning of nanofibers, plasma spray, ebeam deposition, crystal growth, CvD, and intelligent building HvAC systems.• PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1988• 2012 Kern Faculty Fellow, Boston University

w. CleM KARlProfessor, ECE, BMEMultidimensional and multi-scale signal and image processing, detection and estimation, inverse problems, biomedical signal and image processing• PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1991• Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Image

Processing, 2013• Appointed Member of the Steering Committee for

the iEEE Transactions on Medical imaging• Appointed Member of IEEE SPS Conference Board• Vice-chair IEEE Biomedical Image and Signal

Processing Technical Committee • Steering Committee for the IEEE International

symposium on Biomedical imaging• Past Associate Editor for Tomography & MRI, IEEE

Transactions on image Processing• 2000 ECE Award for Excellence in Teaching• Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Transactions on Image

Processing (2013–2016)• Member, Board of Governors IEEE Signal

Processing society (2011–2013)• Member, Steering Committee, IEEE Transactions

on Medical imaging (2011–2012)• Member, IEEE Signal Processing Society

Conference Board• Member, IEEE Signal Processing Society TC

Review Board• Member, IEEE Bio Signal and Image Processing

Technical Committee (2007–2014)

eRIC KolACZyKProfessor, Mathematics and Statistics statistical modeling of instrumental data in temporal, spatial, and network indexed contexts• PhD, Stanford University, 1994• Elected Fellow of the American Statistical

Association• Elected Member of the International Statistical

institute• Senior Member, IEEE

leV leVItInDistinguished Professor, ECEinformation theory, physics of communication and computing, complex and organized systems, quantum theory of measurement, reliable communication and computing, bioinformatics• PhD, USSR Academy of Sciences, Gorky University,

1969• Life Fellow, IEEE• Member, International Academy of Informatization

tHoMAS lIttleProfessor, ECE; Associate Dean of Educational Initiatives, College of Engineering; Associate Director, NSF Smart Lighting ERCComputer networking (wireless, vehicular, opportunistic, delay tolerant), mobile computing, distributed systems, multimedia streaming and storage, video on demand, visible light communications• PhD, Syracuse University, 1991• Editorial Board Member, Journal of Multimedia

Tools and Applications• Kern Faculty Fellow, Boston University, College of

Engineering• 2009 BU College of Engineering Faculty Service

Award• 2007 Dean’s Catalyst Award, BU College of

Engineering• 2001 Mass eComm 10 Award• 1995 NSF CAREER Award• 1991 NSF Research Initiation Award

ABRAHAM MAttAProfessor, Computer ScienceTransport and routing protocols for the internet and wireless networks, feedback-based control design and analysis, architectures for protocol design and large-scale traffic management, modeling and performance evaluation• PhD, University of Maryland at College Park, 1995• Visiting Professor/Researcher, Telematics

Engineering Department, Carlos iii University of Madrid, and institute of iMDEA networks, Madrid, spain, november 2012- December 2012.

BoBAK nAZeRAssistant Professor, ECEinformation theory and communications, reliable computation over networks, distributed signal processing• PhD, University of California, Berkeley, 2009• 2012 NSF CAREER Award• 2011 Dean’s Catalyst Award, College of

Engineering, Boston University• 2009 Eli Jury Award, EECS Department, UC

Berkeley

15

eRol peKÖZProfessor, Operations & Technology Management, SMGApplied probability and statistics, rare events, stein’s method queuing theory and statistical methods for health care data• PhD, University of California Berkeley 1995

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

ARI tRACHtenBeRGProfessor, ECECyber security, algorithms, error correcting codes• PhD, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign,

2000• 2013 ECE Award for Excellence in Teaching• 2012 Kern Faculty Fellow, Boston University• 2003 ECE Award for Excellence in Teaching• 2002 NSF CAREER Award

SAnDoR VAJDAProfessor, BME, Chemistry; Director, Biomolecular Engineering Research Centerscientific computing, primarily optimization; computational chemistry and biology, including protein and peptide structure determination, protein engineering, and drug design• PhD, Hungarian Academy of Science (Hungary),

1983• Editorial Manager, Proteins: Structure, Function

and Bioinformatica

DIVISIon CoMMItteeS

GRADuAte CoMMItteeHua Wang-ChairSean AnderssonVenkatesh SaligramaDavid StarobinskiPirooz VakiliChristos CassandrasElizabeth Flagg

SCHeDulInG CoMMItteeHua Wang-ChairJames R. PerkinsRuth MasonElizabeth Flagg

DIVISIon ADMInIStRAtIon

CHRIStoS G. CASSAnDRASDivision Head

HuA wAnGAssociate Head

RutH MASonDivision Director

elIZABetH FlAGG, eD.M. Graduate Programs Manager

CHeRyl StewARtCommunications Manager

CISe AFFIlIAteD StAFFlInDA GRoSSeRAssociate Director, Center for Information and Systems Engineering (CISE)Administrative Director, BU Clean Energy & Environmental Sustainability Initiative (CEESI)Director of Corporate Relations, SE

DenISe JoSepHAdministrator

17

US INTERNATIONAL TOTAL

Female Male Female Male

phD 3 8 17 28

Meng 6 1 10 17

MS 2 2 1 2 7

leAp 4 4

BS/MS 0

Minor 1 3 4

totAl 3 18 10 29 60

GRADuAte pRoGRAM populAtIontABle 1: GRADuAte StuDent enRollMent 2012-2013

GRADUATE PROGRAMS

tHe DIVISIon oF SySteMS enGIneeRInG (Se) offers a unique interdisciplinary graduate program with select faculty from the College of Engineering Biomedical Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering departments; the College of Arts and sciences Computer science, Earth & Environment, and Mathematics & Statistics departments; and the school of Management. sE offers PhD, Ms and MEng degrees to graduate students and an Undergraduate Minor to undergraduate students with interests in information, decision, and control sciences, and in all application areas encompassing the modeling, analysis, simulation, control, optimization, and management of complex systems.

The Division offers research opportunities through the Center for information and systems Engineering (CisE). Please see the Research section for more on CisE. Research activities focus on: automation, robotics and control; communications and networking; computational biology; information sciences; and production, service and energy systems.

systems Engineering cuts across the traditional engineering departments as a discipline that enables building, analyzing, or managing a system be it electrical, mechanical, chemical, biological or one involving business processes and logistics. our graduates are equipped with the unique skills to adapt their knowledge and expertise to different application domains with this flexibility placing them in high demand.

18

tABle 2: GRADuAte StuDent populAtIon 2000-2013

2

0

10

20

30

20

25

60

STU

DEN

TS

Fall 20122011–20122010–20112009–20102008–2009

Ph.D. MS MEng LEAP BS/MS

ACADEMIC YEAR

2000–2001

2001–2002

2002–2003

2003–2004

2004–2005

2005–2006

2006–2007

2007–2008

2008–2009

2009–2010

2010–2

011

2011–2012

2012–2

013

BS/MS

Minor

MENG

MS

PHD

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

55

60

3 4 6

13

25 25

20

2729

26 2829

33

6

114

7

8

1

12

28

11

17

1

4

4

GRADuAte StuDent FunDInGtABle 3: GRADuAte StuDent FunDInG 2012-2013

Minor MEng MS PhD TOTAL

Research Assistants 1 21.5 22.5

Graduate teaching Fellows 0.5 3.5 4

Dean's Fellows 3 3

Independent 4 16 7 27

other Fellowship 1 2.5 3.5

totAlS 4 17 11 28 60

19

DeGReeS AwARDeDtABle 4: DeGReeS AwARDeD

5

2000–2001

2001–2002

2002–2003

2003–2004

2004–2005

2005–2006

2006–2007

2007–2008

2008–2009

2009–2010

2010–2

011

2011–2012

2012–2

013

PHD

MS

MENG

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1 1

5

3

4 4

2

4

5 5 5

3 3

6

2 2

3

8

2

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

Verbal Score

Ph.D.MEng0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

Qualatative Score

Ph.D.MEng0.0

0.5

1.0

1.5

2.0

2.5

3.0

3.5

4.0

Analytical Writing

Ph.D.MEng

UndergradMinors

48 – Number of PhD degrees awarded since 2001 in Systems Engineering

25 – Number of PhD degrees awarded since Division established in 2008

5 – Number of PhD degrees awarded this year (Table 5)

18 – Number of MS degrees awarded since Division established in 2008

4 – Number of MS degrees awarded this year (Table 6)

10 – MEng degrees awarded since program offered in Fall 2011

5 – Number of MEng degrees awarded this year (Table 7)

2 – Number of Undergraduate Minors awarded since program offered in Fall 2010

2 – Number of Undergraduate Minors degrees awarded this year (Table 8)

tABle 5: pHD DeGReeS AwARDeD

STUDENT DISSERTATION TITLE ADvISOR AND COMMITTEE MEMbERS

Geng, yanfeng optimization Methods for intelligent Transportation systems in Urban settings

Cassandras (Advisor), Castañón, Paschalidis, Caramanis, schwager

Huang, Fuzhuo on the Maximum Weighted independent set Problem with Applications in Wireless sensor networks

paschalidis (Advisor), Cassandras, vakili, saligrama, ishwar

Sun, na Control variate Approach for Multi-User Estimation via Monte Carlo simulation

Vakili (Advisor), Andersson, Cassandras, Belta, Rindisbatcher

tang, Xiaojin importance sampling for Efficient Parametric simulation Vakili (Advisor), Andersson, Paschalidis, Castañón, Pekoz

wang, tao Control and optimization Approaches for Power Management in Energy-Aware Battery-Powered systems

Cassandras (Advisor), Castañón, Paschalidis, Caramanis, schwager

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tABle 6: MS DeGReeS AwARDeD tABle 7: MenG DeGReeS AwARDeD tABle 8: unDeRGRADuAte MInoR DeGReeS AwARDeD

ReCRuItMenttABle 9: ADMISSIonS ReSultS FoR 2012-2013

STUDENT ADvISOR

Bilgin, enes* Caramanis

lin, Xuchao* Cassandras

liu, Dan Densmore

Rossell, Daniel Cassandras

* Continuing post-bachelor’s PhD students who earned their MS degree on completion of their Prospectus Defense and MS program requirements.

STUDENT ADvISOR

Agirman, Ahmet Wang

Cameron, Kellas Cassandras

Ridley, louis starobinski

Saltzman, Andrew vakili

yang, yuzhang vakili

STUDENT ADvISOR MAjOR

Al tabash, Kholood

Hubbard Computer Eng

evans, nicholas

Ekinci Mechanical Eng

US INTERNATIONAL TOTAL

female Male female Male

MEng 1 16 17 32 66

Ms 8 14 12 29 63

PhD 1 13 11 64 89

total 10 43 40 125 218

MEng 1 10 8 14 33

Ms 7 8 1 5 21

PhD 4 3 6 13

total 12 18 12 25 67

MEng 3 1 7 11

Ms 2 3 2 7

PhD 2 5 7

total 2 6 3 14 25

AP

PLI

CA

NT

SA

DM

ISS

ION

S

US INTERNATIONAL TOTAL

female Male female Male

MEng 7 6 11 33 57

Ms 23 45 13 31 112

PhD 4 6 13 40 63

total 34 57 37 104 232

MEng 6 6 2 10 24

Ms 11 27 3 41

PhD 3 1 4 8 16

total 20 34 6 21 81

MEng 1 1 5 7

Ms 2 1 3

PhD 3 4 7

total 1 3 3 10 17MA

TR

ICU

LAT

ION

S

AP

PLI

CA

NT

SA

DM

ISS

ION

SM

AT

RIC

ULA

TIO

NS

tABle 10: ADMISSIonS pRoJeCtIonS FoR FAll 2013

21

pHD teACHInG ReQuIReMent

PhD students must take Teaching Practice i and Teaching Practice ii. The course descriptions state that these courses cannot be used to meet the structured course requirements. Practical teaching experience for an assigned course includes some combination of running discussion sections, managing laboratory sections, providing some lectures, preparing homework and solution sets, exams, and grading. Students will attend lectures/seminars on best teaching practices. Total time commitment: up to 20 hours per week per semester for each course.

four courses were added to the course catalog to support this requirement. PhD students may elect to register for Teaching Practicum i and ii for four credits or for zero-credits.

• EnG sE 801 Teaching Practicum i. 4cr • EnG sE 802 Teaching Practicum ii. 4cr • EnG sE 803 Teaching Practicum i. 0cr • EnG sE 804 Teaching Practicum ii. 0cr

pRACtICuM ReQuIReMent

The College Graduate Committee developed a practicum requirement for the Ms and MEng programs. students will be required to elect a practicum track if they wish to participate. students will fulfill the practicum requirement through either an (a) internship or employment in industry, government, or non-profit organization or (b) other.

PHD STUDENTS

CuRRICuluM DeVelopMent

CuRRent GRADuAte StuDentS

LAST NAME FIRST NAME ADvISOR PREvIOUS INSTITUTION

Aydin Gol Ebru Belta Ecole Polytechnique federale De Lausanne; Middle East Tech University

Bilgin Enes Caramanis Bilkent University

Chen Yuting saligrama Xi'an Jiaotong University

Cizelj igor Belta University of Zagreb

Geng Yanfeng Cassandras University of science and Technology of China

Goldis Evgeniy Caramanis Harvey Mudd College

Jones Austin Belta, schwager Washington University in st. Louis

Kavurmacioglu Emir starobinski Purdue University at West Lafayette

Khazaeni Yasaman Cassandras West virginia University; sharif University of Technology

lima Fleck Julia Cassandras Federal University of Rio De Janeiro

lin Xuchao Cassandras Zhejiang University

Mirzaei Hanieh vakili sharif University of Technology

Moghadasi Mohammad Paschalidis, vajda sharif University of Technology

nan feng Paschalidis Massachusetts institute of Technology, national University of singapore

ntakou Elli Caramanis national Technical University of Athens

pourazarm sepideh Cassandras Khajeh Nassir-al-deen Toosi University of Technology

Qian Jing Paschalidis Tsinghua University

Si Wei starobinski Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Simhon Eran starobinski Technion, israel institute of Technology

Sun Xinmiao Wang Beijing institute of Technology

ulusoy Mehmet Alphan Belta sabanci Universitesi

Vasile Cristian-ioan Belta "Politehnica" University of Bucharest

wang Jing Paschalidis Huazhong University of science and Technology

wang Tao Cassandras Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Georgia Institute of Technology

pHD StuDentS

LAST NAME FIRST NAME ADvISOR PREvIOUS INSTITUTION

Zhang Bowen Baillieul Zhejiang University

Zhang Yuan Caramanis Xian Jiaotong University

Zhao Qi Paschalidis University of science and Technology Beijing

Zheng Jiefu Castañón nanjing University

MS StuDentS

LAST NAME FIRST NAME ADvISOR PREvIOUS INSTITUTION

Bell walker Benjamin Perkins University of Tulsa; Houghton College

Brief Amanda Perkins Cornell University

Huang Zhiyuan Perkins Beijing forestry University

Jessen ian Perkins Williams College

Ke Cheng-Hsin starobinski national Taipei institute of Technology

liu Dan Densmore Wuhan University

navani Abhinav Perkins College of The Holy Cross

Rossell Daniel Cassandras Texas A & M University

Sarkisian Alan Perkins California state University, fresno; University of Dallas

terracciano Katherine Baillieul olin College of Engineering

yee steven fritz Boston University

LAST NAME FIRST NAME ADvISOR PREvIOUS INSTITUTION

Agirman Ahmet Wang Anadolu University

Cameron Kellas Cassandras University of Texas at Austin; Massachusetts institute of Technology

Cannon Benjamin Perkins University of Georgia

Chapman Jonathan vakili Massachusetts institute of Technology

Connell John Perkins Harvard University Graduate school of Education, st Lawrence University

Guzelsu Berke Perkins Franklin & Marshall College

lai Chun-Yen Wang New Jersey Institute of Technology, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology

li Cheng Andersson Beijing Institute of Civil Engineering & Architecture

McDonald Gabriel saligrama The ohio state University

Saltzman Andrew vakili Wake forest University

Shah Karan Wang University of Mumbai

Srivastava Mehul vakili Birla institute of Technology

tian Hao Andersson Nanjing University of Science & Technology

wang Le saligrama Shanghai Jiaotong University

Xin Liangxiao starobinski Zhejiang University

yang Yuzhang vakili southeast University

Zhao Yi Andersson Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications

MenG StuDentS

pHD StuDentS continued

22

23

pHD tRAVel AwARD ReCIpIentS

GRADuAte StuDent ACCoMplISHMentSSTUDENT ADvISOR ACCOMPLISHMENT

enes Bilgin Caramanis • The IBM/IEEE Smarter Planet Challenge 2012: Student Projects Changing the World - Honorable Mention

emir Kavurmacioglu

starobinski • DYSPAN National Science Foundation Student Travel Grant• Boston University Scholar’s Day 2013, 1st place — CISE Award

Hanieh Mirzaei vakili • Boston University Scholar’s Day 2013, 2nd place — CISE Award

Mohammad Moghadasi

Paschalidis • Honorable Mention, CISE, Science and Engineering Day , Boston University, 2013• Granted the National Science Foundation travel award, RECOMB conference, Beijing, China, 2013• Granted the Center of Information and Systems Engineering travel award, CDC conference, Maui, Hawaii, UsA, 2012

Alphan Mehmet ulusoy

Belta • IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC) 2012 travel award

• International Symposium on Distributed and Autonomous Systems (DARS) 2012 student travel award

• Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) 2013 student travel grant

• Summer internship at Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL)

• Poster presented: Ulusoy, “Incremental Controller Synthesis in Probabilistic Environments with Temporal Logic Constraints”, 4th Workshop on formal Methods for Robotics and Automation (Rss 2013), Technische Universitt MfC nchen, Berlin, Germany

• Poster presented: Ulusoy, “Optimality and Robustness in Multi-Robot Path Planning”, The 2012 Symposium on Emerging Topics in Control and Modeling: Networked Systems, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Jing wang Paschalidis • Student Developer in Google Summer of Code 2012• Mentor in Google Summer of Code 2013.

STUDENT ADvISOR

Aydin Gol, ebru Belta

Bilgin, enes Caramanis

Cizelj, Igor Belta

Geng, yanfeng Cassandras

Kavurmacioglu, emir starobinski

lin, Xuchao Cassandras

Mirzaei, Hanieh vakili

Moghadasi, Mohammad Paschalidis

Zhang, Bowen Baillieul

24

RESEARCHThe Division brings together faculty from across the University to pursue collaborative research in systems Engineering. Division faculty hold primary appointments in the College of Engineering (CoE) Department of Biomedical Engineering, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Department of Mechanical Engineering; the College of Arts and sciences (CAs) Bioinformatics Program, Departments of Computer Science, Earth & Environment, and Mathematics and statistics; and the school of Management (sMG) Department of operations and Technology Management.

tHeRe ARe FIVe pRIMARy AReAS oF ReSeARCH:

• AutoMAtIon, RoBotICS AnD ContRol, which includes teams of autonomous agents, networked control systems, image-guided surgery, control of material processes, and nanoscale systems;

• CoMMunICAtIonS AnD netwoRKInG, which includes performance analysis, pricing and resource allocation, communication protocols, cyber-security, visual light communication, and optical, wireless, and sensor networks;

• CoMputAtIonAl BIoloGy, which includes metabolic and gene networks, systems biology, and protein docking;

• InFoRMAtIon SCIenCeS, including signal and image processing, multi-resolution signal modeling, multidimensional detection and estimation, geometric-based modeling and estimation, image encoding/decoding, and the integration of digital signal processing with signal understanding; and

• pRoDuCtIon, SeRVICe AnD eneRGy SySteMS, which includes energy economics and management, smart grids, production scheduling and planning, logistics, inventory control, supply chain management, financial engineering.

This photo of a work flow for the project, “Simulation of the Smart Grid Environment: Controlling the Electricity Demand in real Time” won second prize in the SE Graduate Student Photo Contest. Photo credit: Enes Bilgin

25

DAnCeS wItH RoBotS: teACHInG AutoMAtonS to FIGuRe out wHAt neeDS to Be Done Excerpt from an article by Rich Barlow

H. Kayhan Ozcimder (ENG’11,’15) is a graduate student in pRoFeSSoR JoHn BAIllIeul’S (Me, eCe, Se) intelligent Mechatronics Lab, whose mission is to give machines the ability to respond to their environment. The researchers began by mapping the coordinates of actual salsa dancers and programming the robots with four basic beginner moves. The robots, which are outfitted with motion sensors, read each other’s moves and respond according to the programming.

ozcimder thinks motion-reading robots might someday serve as useful tools for judging dance competitions, but Baillieul is hunting bigger game. He’s not out to help “some high school guy who had trouble getting a date, so you get a robot. The ultimate goal is to understand human reaction to gestures and how machines may react to gestures.” That could enable robots to team with, and perhaps take over from, humans in hazardous jobs, from treacherous rescues to repairs in lethal environments.

The challenge is to build machines that can perform tasks with some autonomy and respond in fluid situations they might not have been precisely programmed for, an instance where man still has it all over machines. Whereas human reaction is the child of several parents—instinct, surely, but also the ability to learn from experience and sometimes override instinct—robots are not yet agile enough to

ignore their “instinct” (programming). The solution, says Baillieul, is to give the machines sufficiently “massive experiential data sets” so that they can react to numerous situations.

one avenue the lab is exploring is humans’ use of nonverbal cues to communicate. Good dancers move seamlessly together, responding to each other’s touch and motions; amateurs without experience reading each other’s cues often come off looking stilted. nonverbal cues can also be used to send misinformation; bats, for example, camouflage their motions so that they can sneak up on insect prey, a fake-out familiar to anyone who’s tried to swat a pesky fly. Hence the lab’s work with getting robots to use sensors to read each other’s metal-body language, aimed at “how you might program flying vehicles or mobile robots to do the right thing, in terms of communicating or not communicating through their motions,” Baillieul says.

The next great dance team: robots that respond to each other’s motions, designed by BU researchers. Photo credit: Kayhan ozcimder

ReSeARCH HIGHlIGHtSDeSIGnInG A lIGHteR, CHeApeR, MoRe RelIABle VeHICle Excerpt from an article by Rachel Harrington

Auto technology has come a long way over the years and includes recent advances ranging from night vision to automatic high-beam controls. With these new developments come more physical wires that will increase the cost, weight, and maintenance of a car.

“in the future, as much as four kilometers of wires may be necessary for a car to operate,” said Wei si (PhD ’15). “on top of that, these wires could weigh as much as 40 kilograms, an amount that would have a bad effect on fuel consumption.”

To solve this potential problem before it happens, Wei si (PhD ‘15) and Morteza Hashemi (PhD ’16) have been working with Electrical & Computer Engineering pRoFeSSoRS DAVID StARoBInSKI and ARI tRACHtenBeRG, as well as General Motors Research, to determine if using wireless sensor networks (Wsn) might be a greener way to construct tomorrow’s vehicles.

some research has already been done on wireless car sensors and electronic control units (ECU) arranged in a single-hop model, but the BU research team thinks this can be improved.

“[in existing models], if some sensor-to-ECU links experience high power loss, then the quality of service degrades,” they wrote in an abstract about their work. instead, they’re working on a multi-hop model that uses different sensors to cooperate and relay information in the car.

“our results show that the transmission rate of previous models can be as low as 78 percent while our network performs at higher than 95 percent,” they wrote in their abstract, adding that their design provides energy savings as well.

spending more than three years of work on the project, the researchers’ efforts are paying off. After competing in scholars Day, the annual Boston University graduate student research symposium, Hashemi and si have won both the Center for Reliable information systems and Cybersecurity Award as well as the Provost’s Award.

Pictured from left to right, Wei Si (PhD ‘15), Morteza Hashemi (PhD ‘16), and PROFESSORS ARI TRACHTENBERG (ECE, SE) and DAVID STAROBINSKI (ECE, SE) are working with General Motors research to determine if using wireless sensor networks might be a greener way to construct tomorrow’s vehicles. Photo credit: rachel Harrington

The research team tested out sensors, like this one attached to the suspension system of the front wheel, on a Cadillac Escalade.Photo credit: Morteza Hashemi

26

27

SeCuRIty At ouR FInGeRtIpS Excerpt from an article by Rachel Harrington

in today’s world, it’s easier to find a college student carrying a laptop, smartphone or iPod than to spot one without. As people become increasingly dependent on electronic devices, more personal information, including credit card and bank account passwords, go on these handheld machines as well. security is now of great concern since many of these digital pieces require only a four digit passcode to sign in—but what if these tablets could recognize the swipe of your finger?

That’s the idea behind research by Boston University’s Professor Janusz Konrad (ECE) and ASSoCIAte pRoFeSSoR pRAKASH ISHwAR (eCe, Se), who are collaborating with Polytechnic institute of New York Professor Nasir Memon and Associate Professor Katherine isbister.

“We hope the swipes can be unique enough, by linking several of them to form a word, for example, to verify user identity,” said Konrad.

To support the project, the national science foundation recently awarded the teams nearly $800,000, with half going to Konrad and ishwar. The BU researchers will focus their side of the project on examining how hand and body gestures can be used for authentication.

“Hand or body movements could be used to open a door instead of a card swipe if the camera recognized an individual’s gestures,” said Konrad.

Though ishwar and Konrad have long been exploring the possibility of using cameras in action recognition, they didn’t think their results would be good enough for authentication until they met Memon when he visited BU as an institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (iEEE) Distinguished Lecturer.

“He had already worked on the swipes idea, but when he saw our gesture results, it all clicked together,” said Konrad. Initial tests using a Microsoft Kinect camera have shown promise, Konrad added, and he and ishwar are already looking toward other places where their technology might be used.

ECE student Jonathan Wu (PhD’15), in collaboration with PROFESSORS ISHWAR (ECE, SE) and Konrad (ECE), performs an arm swing to test new gesture-based authentication algorithms he has been working on. Photo credit: Jonathan Wu

SIDeKICKS tHAt SteAl tHe SHow: CollInS lAB DISCoVeRS noVel teCHnIQue to BooSt AntIBIotIC eFFeCtIVeneSSExcerpt of an article by Mark Dwortzan

Amid a growing incidence of antibiotic-resistant infections and dearth of new drugs to treat them, new strategies are urgently needed to bolster the world’s antibiotic arsenal. one approach, strongly advocated by a special U.s. food and Drug Administration task force launched in september 2012, is to develop new antibacterial drugs, but the process can be very costly and time consuming. Rather than endeavor to devise entirely new classes of antibiotics, pRoFeSSoR JAMeS J. CollInS (BMe, MSe, Se) has spent more than five years exploring ways to enhance existing antibiotics to combat bacterial infections more effectively.

now Collins and researchers in his lab have discovered a new technique designed to render these infections more susceptible to traditional antibiotics. Described in the January 6 online edition of the journal nature Biotechnology, the technique systematically identifies genes within E. Coli bacteria that inhibit the production of molecules called reactive oxygen species (Ros) that damage the bacteria’s DnA. once those genes are disabled, the bacteria dramatically increase their production of the DnA-damaging molecules, enabling lower doses of existing antibiotics to kill the more vulnerable bacteria.

Collins’ technique could lead to “sidekick” drugs, to be taken in combination with traditional antibiotics, that disable selected genes and thereby boost Ros production in E. Coli as well as in bacteria that cause tuberculosis, staph infections, salmonella and other diseases. “We’re showing that engineering approaches can be applied to enhance our existing antibiotics arsenal to take on this growing public health threat,” said Collins.

To find genes that inhibit the production of Ros in E. Coli, the researchers augmented an existing computational model of the metabolic network

of the bacterium (consisting of over 4,000 genes) with hundreds of mathematical equations related to Ros production. They next systematically used the model to determine the impact on Ros production of disabling hundreds of different genes in the E. Coli cell.

Collins’ discovery provides, for the first time, a comprehensive, systems-level understanding of the metabolic pathways that produce Ros, thus enabling scientists to pinpoint new gene targets and potential sidekick drugs that enhance antibiotic effectiveness.

“for many biologists, the interest lies in gaining more insight into the underlying processes within the bacteria,” said Collins. “We as engineers are partly interested in these processes but particularly driven to figure out clever ways to utilize existing mechanisms for therapeutic interventions.”

The research team’s next step is to set up a high-throughput, automated process to screen millions of different compounds to identify those that disable Ros-inhibiting genes, and further analyze these compounds to ensure that they’re effective in boosting antibiotic potency without causing side effects or introducing harmful toxins. Meanwhile, a startup company that Collins helped found, EnBiotix, will further develop the technique.

funded by the national institutes of Health and Howard Hughes Medical institute, Collins co-authored the nature Biotechnology paper with CollinsLab researchers Mark P. Brynildsen (now an assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering at Princeton University), Jonathan A Winkler (now a scientist at Seres Health), MD-PhD student Catherine s. spina (BME) and research assistant Cody MacDonald (BME’12).

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ReSeARCH lABoRAtoRIeS

AnDeRSSon lABoRAtoRy Associate professor Sean Andersson www.bu.edu/anderssonlab 110 Cummington st., Boston, MA 02215 617–353–4949

The Andersson Laboratory at Boston University focuses on systems and control theory. We are primarily interested in the application areas of nanotechnology, nanobioscience, and robotics. We believe the potential of scanning probe microscopy has not yet been realized. We are investigating novel methods for rapid imaging of samples and for studying dynamics in systems with nanometer-scale phenomena. By replacing the traditional raster-scan approach to imaging with feedback control laws, which drive the sampling scheme, the domain of applicability of scanning probe technologies can be extended deeper into the realm of dynamic processes. our research on robotics centers on the framework of symbolic control. We aim to develop methods for handling the complexity of robotics in real-world environments. ongoing work includes the use of symbols to tokenize the environment as well as the control and applications in cooperative control.

ADVAnCeD MAteRIAlS pRoCeSS ContRol lABoRAtoRy Associate professor Michael Gevelber www.bu.edu/pcl 15 st. Mary’s st., Brookline, MA 02446 617–353–9572

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

BIoRoBotICS ReSeARCH GRoup (BRG) Adjunct professor pierre Dupont www.bu.edu/bioroboticsrm 350 Enders Building, Boston Children’s Hospital 300 Longwood Ave., Boston, MA 02115 617–919–3562

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

CollInS lABoRAtoRy professor James Collins www.bu.edu/abl 44 Cummington st., Boston, MA 02215 617–353–0390

Our laboratory is currently working in two areas: 1) We are developing and implementing computational-experimental methods to reverse engineer and analyze gene regulatory networks in microbes and higher organisms. 2) We are designing and constructing synthetic gene networks for a variety of biotechnology and bioenergy applications. We are also using engineered gene networks to study general principles underlying gene regulation.

ContRol oF DISCRete eVent SySteMS (CoDeS) lABoRAtoRy professor Christos Cassandras people.bu.edu/cgc/CoDES 8 saint Mary’s street, Boston MA 02215 617–353–7154

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

Professor Sean Andersson

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HyBRID AnD netwoRKeD SySteMS lABoRAtoRy (HyneSS lAB) Associate professor Calin Belta hyness.bu.edu 15 st. Mary’s st., Brookline, MA 02446 617–353–9586

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

InFoRMAtIon SCIenCeS & SySteMS (ISS) lABoRAtoRy professors Murat Alanyali, Jeffrey Carruthers, Christos Cassandras, David Castañón, Clem Karl, Janusz Konrad, thomas little, prakash Ishwar, Hamid nawab, Bobak nazer, Ioannis paschalidis, Venkatesh Saligrama, David Starobinski, Ari trachtenberg www.iss.bu.edu 8 st. Mary’s st., Boston MA 02215 617–353–1668, 617–353–9919

The iss Laboratory groups researchers at Boston University with common interests in research, training and technology transfer in the field of information systems and sciences. Although members of the iss Laboratory have a wide variety of research interests, there are four primary concentration areas, namely Image Video & Biomedical signal Processing, statistical Learning, Communication Networks, and Systems Control & Optimization. Research from these areas finds application in a wide variety of critical national and international needs, including biomedical signal and image processing for disease detection, remote sensing for atmospheric science, buried land mine detection, distributed and mobile computing, sensor networks, and advanced visual communication and entertainment. The above topics and applications form the focus for exciting and challenging study and thesis work. several dozen Ms, PhD, MEng, as well as undergraduate students carry out research within the laboratory. They are supervised by more than a dozen dynamic faculty of international renown and with abundant financial support. The research in the laboratory is supported by various sources, such as the national science foundation, national institutes of Health, office of naval Research, Air force office of scientific Research, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, as well as industry.

IntellIGent MeCHAtRonICS lABoRAtoRy professor John Baillieul, Associate professor Sean Andersson and Associate professor Hua wang www.bu.edu/iml 110 Cummington street, Boston MA 02215 617–353–9848

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

lABoRAtoRy oF netwoRKInG AnD InFoRMAtIon SySteMS (nISlAB) professors David Starobinski and Ari trachtenberg www.nislab.bu.edu 8 st. Mary’s st., Boston, MA 02215 617–353–0202, 617–353–1581

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

Professor John Baillieul with graduate students in the Intelligent Mechatronics Laboratory Photo credit: Cheryl Stewart

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This photo of an x80Pro mobile robot moving in an environment created by projecting a Matlab figure using a short throw projector in the Hybrid and Networked System Laboratory won third prize in the SE Graduate Student Photo Contest. Photo credit: Igor Cizelj

Evgeniy Goldis, SE graduate student in Professor Michael Caramanis’ group, is looking at how price patterns in one of the largest energy markets in the U.S.A. (PJM) can change dramatically over time. This project focuses on optimizing the state of the transmission network (topology control) to better adapt to the underlying conditions causing these price swings. Photo credit: Cheryl Stewart

MultI-DIMenSIonAl SIGnAl pRoCeSSInG (MDSp) lABoRAtoRy professor w. Clement Karl mdsp.bu.edu 8 st. Mary’s st., Boston, MA 02215 617–353–1668

The MDsP laboratory conducts research in the general areas of multi-dimensional and multi-resolution signal and image processing and estimation and geometric-based estimation. The development of efficient methods for the extraction of information from diverse data sources in the presence of uncertainty including:

• Enhanced resolution image reconstruction for Cardiac Computerized Tomography • Multisource data fusion • Nanoscale optical microscopy • Biological interface estimation and tracking

MultIMeDIA CoMMunICAtIonS lABoRAtoRy professor thomas D.C. little hulk.bu.edu 8 st. Mary’s st., Boston, MA 02215 617–353–9877

The Multimedia Communications Laboratory (MCL) at Boston University focuses on topics in ubiquitous distributed computing. our legacy work is in the area of distributed multimedia information systems emphasizing time-dependent and continuous media data such as video. Recent work targets pervasive computing, optical wireless communications with visible spectrum, and mobile, mesh, vehicular, ad hoc, and sensor networks (MAnET, vAnET, snET).

MultI-RoBot SySteMS lABoRAtoRy (MSl) Assistant professor Mac Schwager 44 Cummington st, Room B-14, Boston, MA 02215 617-353-3414

in the Multi-robot systems Laboratory (MsL), we study group robotic agents that collaborate to accomplish a common task. We focus on the design, analysis, and implementation of decentralized control, estimation, and learning algorithms for groups of robots. We also develop robotic aerial and ground platforms for validating our algorithms experimentally. The laboratory includes an aerial robot-flying arena with a motion capture system for high-precision, high-speed experimental investigations with autonomous flying robots.

netwoRK optIMIZAtIon AnD ContRol lABoRAtoRy professor Ioannis paschalidis www.bu.edu/ece/people/faculty/o-z/ioannis-paschalidis 8 st. Mary’s street, Boston, MA 02215, PHo 415 617-353-0434

Research deals with fundamental aspects of optimizing the design and operation of networks as well as designing control algorithms to regulate their operation. networks are pervasive in a variety of application domains, from computer, communication, and sensor networks to supply chains, distribution networks, and biological networks like protein interaction and metabolic networks. Recent research topics include transmission scheduling in wireless networks, optimal deployment of networks of mobile agents, network routing, network anomaly detection, pricing and resource allocation, network simulation, intelligent warehouse management, protein docking, and optimization of metabolic networks.

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netwoRKS ReSeARCH GRoup (nRG) professors Azer Bestavros, John Byers, Mark Crovella, and Abraham Matta www.bu.edu/cs/nrg/ 111 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA 02215 617-353-8919

The networks Research Group (nRG) conducts basic research in networking within the Department of Computer science at Boston University. our research interests are broad, and encompass network measurement, the design of new network architectures and network protocols, the design and implementation of networked applications and systems, and network performance analysis. Application domains of interest range from cloud computing to social networks to peer-to- peer systems.

RelIABle CoMputInG lABoRAtoRy professors Mark Karpovsky and lev levitin www.bu.edu/reliable 8 st. Mary’s street, Boston, MA 02215 617-353-4607

Members of the laboratory conduct research on a broad variety of topics, including the design of computer chips, efficient hardware testing at chip, board, and system levels; functional software testing, efficient signal processing algorithms, coding and decoding; latency, saturation, and critical phenomena in interconnection networks and deadlock prevention in computer networks.

StRuCtuRAl BIoInFoRMAtICS lABoRAtoRy professor Sandor Vajda www.structure.bu.edu 44 Cummington st., Boston, MA 02215 617–353–4757

The focus of this laboratory is the development and application of computational tools for the analysis of protein structure and protein-ligand interactions. some of the particular problems we currently study are the evaluation of binding free energy in protein-protein complexes, development of efficient docking algorithms, computational solvent mapping of proteins using molecular probes to identify the most favorable binding positions, method development for fragment-based drug design, construction of an enzyme binding site database, and improving the prediction of protein active sites by homology modeling.

VISuAl InFoRMAtIon pRoCeSSInG lABoRAtoRy professors Janusz Konrad and Venkatesh Saligrama www.vip.bu.edu/ 8 saint Mary’s street, Boston, MA 02215, Rooms 406, 446 617-353-1040

The viP Laboratory belongs to the information systems and sciences (iss) Group at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Boston University. its three main objectives are sponsored research, student training, technology transfer, in the broad area of image, video and multimedia processing. it has been home to graduate and undergraduate students working on various aspects of visual information processing, such as visual surveillance, 3-D video or human-computer interfaces. The most recent research thrust in the viP Laboratory is directed towards the development of next-generation user authentication methods to replace pass-codes, key-cards, RfiD tags, etc. The focus is on gesture-based authentication where a user performs, for example, a unique arm swing, allowing the system to recognize him or her. The advantage of such authentication over today’s fingerprint or iris scans is that once such a scan is compromised it cannot be recovered, whereas a gesture can be changed.

Professor Ioannis Paschalidis (ECE, SE) and his graduate students meet to discuss ongoing work in wireless sensor networks, including a novel statistical localization system they have developed that enables a wireless Sensor Network (SNET) to determine the physical location of its nodes.

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tHe CenteR FoR InFoRMAtIon AnD SySteMS enGIneeRInG (CISe)www.bu.edu/systems

The Center for information and systems Engineering (CisE) is a research affiliate of the Division of systems Engineering. CisE provides an interdepartmental home for faculty and students interested in research in information and control systems theory and its relevance to various application domains encompassing the analysis, design, and management of complex systems that have come to prominence as a result of the information, communication, and computation revolution. information and systems engineering research at Boston University is strong and accomplished, spread across numerous departments, colleges and schools. CisE faculty have been successful in bringing in multi-million dollar external research support.

Created in 2002, CisE fosters interdisciplinary collaboration and research in emerging applications and the use of methodologies such as optimization methods, information theory, control theory, applied probability, statistics, simulation, decision theory, multi-scale modeling, queuing, algorithms, machine learning, and stochastic processes.

pRIMARy ApplICAtIon InteReStS ARe In tHe AReAS oF:

• Automation, Robotics and Control• Communication and Networking• Computational Biology• Information Sciences• Production, Service and Energy Systems

CisE has 37 affiliated faculty and over 100 graduate students as of June 2013. Faculty come from the departments of Mechanical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Electrical and Computer Engineering in the College of Engineering; the departments of Computer science, Mathematics and statistics, and Earth and Environment in the College of Arts and sciences; and departments of finance, information systems, and operations Management in the school of Management.

new FACulty JoInInG CISe In 2012-2013

• Nathan Phillips, Earth and Environment (CAS) Professor • Lucy Hutyra, Earth and Environment (CAS) Assistant Professor

pARtICIpAtInG FACulty

• Mechanical Engineering (ENG): Professors S. Andersson, J. Baillieul, C. Belta, M. Caramanis, P. Dupont, M. Gevelber, J. Perkins, P. Vakili, H. Wang (Associate Head, Division of systems Engineering).

• Biomedical Engineering (ENG): Professor S. Vajda• Computer Science (CAS): Professors A. Bestavros, M. Crovella,

A. Matta.• Earth and Environment (CAS): Professors L. Hutyra, N. Phillips

• Electrical and Computer Engineering (ENG): Professors M. Alanyali, J. Carruthers, C. Cassandras (Head, Division of Systems Engineering), D. Castañón (CisE Co-Director and ECE Chair), A. Coskun, P. Ishwar, C. Karl, L. Levitin, T. Little (Associate Dean), B. nazer, i. Paschalidis (CisE Co-Director), v. saligrama, , D. starobinski, A. Trachtenberg

• Math/Statistics (CAS): Professor E. Kolaczyk.• Finance (SMG): Professor N. Kulatilaka• Information Systems (SMG): Professor B. Lubin • Operations Management (SMG): Professor E. Pekoz

ADMInIStRAtIon• David Castañón, Co-Director• Ioannis Paschalidis, Co-Director• Linda Grosser, Associate Director• Denise Joseph, Administrator • Cheryl Stewart, CISE Seminar Manager

2012-2013 CISe ACCoMplISHMentS CISe SMARt CItIeS Boston University researchers are developing concepts, systems and applications designed to make city life more efficient, cleaner, safer and less costly than ever before. Collaborating with experts in academia, government and industry, CisE faculty and students are advancing smart Cities technologies. CisE faculty interests span city infrastructure; communications; computing, big data and analytics; energy and buildings; environment; healthcare; and security.

CisE researchers focused on issues related to smart cities are putting their ideas to the test via the Boston University sustainable neighborhood Lab (snL), a BU-organized living laboratory for enhancing urban sustainability and quality of life. The snL serves as a platform for interdisciplinary research, innovation, outreach and experiential education. Working with Boston neighborhoods and nonprofits, commercial groups, the City of Boston and local utilities, researchers are testing their ideas in real-world scenarios. for example, Christos Cassandras is testing his smart Parking research with the snL.

CISe SeMInARS AnD eVentSCisE manages one of the most vibrant seminar series on campus featuring prominent academic and industrial researchers who present their work to the university audience. These seminars are usually held on fridays at 3 PM at 8 st Mary’s street (see complete list of speakers below).

CisE sponsors events that support its interdepartmental mission and extend its visibility. (see description of events below.)

• March 13, 2013, Smarter Cities: A Roadmap for the Future• April 2, 2013, Twenty-three CISE students participated in BU

scholars Day• April 5, 2013, CISE BU Scholars Day Awards Celebration

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SMARteR CItIeS: A RoADMAp FoR tHe FutuRe March 13, 2013 8 st. Mary’s street

over 150 corporate, academic, and community leaders gathered to discuss the next steps cities could take to improve the quality of life for citizens. CisE Professors Michael Caramanis, Christos Cassandras, Lucy Hutyra, Nalin Kulatilaka and Nathan Phillips and speakers from iBM, BU and the City of Boston shared their vision about the potential for smarter Cities and discussed ways to improve the efficiency of cities using “big data.” The program agenda can be viewed at http://www.bu.edu/systems/research/sc-research-highlights/. CISE Professors Nathan Phillips and Lucy Hutyra

CISE Professor Christos Cassandras and Jurij Paraszcak (IBM) discuss “big data”.Professor Nathan Phillips moderates a panel including CISE Professors Michael Caramanis and Nalin Kulatilaka

10tH AnnuAl CISe AwARDS — FoR Bu SCHolARS DAy April 5, 2013 15 st. Mary’s street

in conjunction with the BU scholars Day on Tuesday, April 2nd, the Center for information and systems Engineering recognized CisE graduate student research with the 10th annual CisE awards. These awards were celebrated on April 5th at the CisE Awards Ceremony.

Entries were judged on scientific or engineering innovation, relevance, promise of future impact, societal implications, and the exhibitor’s presentation. All students whose advisors are CisE affiliated were considered for the CisE awards.

CISe pRIZe wInneRS:

• 1st prize: Emir Kavurmacioglu – Advisor: David Starobinski “Competition in Private Commons: Price War or Market Sharing?”

• 2nd prize: Hanieh Mirzaei – Advisors: Pirooz Vakili & Ioannis Paschalidis “flexible Refinement of Protein-Ligand Docking on Manifolds”

HonoRABle MentIonS:

• Mohammad Moghadasi- Advisor: Ioannis Paschalidis -“A New Distributed Algorithm for the side-Chain Positioning Problem”

• Michael Rahaim- Advisor: Thomas Little-“Heterogeneous Network integration of Rf and visible Light Communications”

• Jonathan Wu-Advisors: Prakesh Ishwar and Janusz Konrad- “Body Login: Gesture-Based User Identification and Authentication with Kinect”

CISE student award winners from left to right:Jonathan Wu, Michael rahaim, Hanieh Mirzaei, Emir Kavurmacioglu

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tHe 2013 CISe JuDGeS weRe:

• Sean Andersson, Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering

• John Baillieul, Professor, Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering

• Michael Caramanis, Professor, Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering

• Luis Carvalho, Assistant Professor, Math/Statistics, College of Arts and sciences

• Mark Crovella , Professor, Computer Science, College of Arts and sciences

• Michael Gevelber, Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering

• Bobak Nazer, Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering

• Ioannis Paschalidis, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering

• Mac Schwager, Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering

puBlICAtIonS DAtABASe

The CisE Publications Database is a resource representing the extensive scholarship across participating departments. it is a web-based searchable database of systems and information engineering publications, such as journal articles, conference proceedings, posters abstracts and presentations, authored by CisE affiliated faculty and their graduate students. Benefits include: being able to cite pre-journal publication of technical papers; ability for graduate students to “publish”; visibility for CisE scholarship.

CoRpoRAte outReACH

CisE has an active industrial outreach program, engaging private sector partners in research collaboration, and as conference and seminar guests. These partnerships provide strategic value to CisE, in their support for research proposals, placements for CisE graduate students and the opportunity to enhance the vitality of our research by learning and reflecting the priorities of the private sector.

Recent industrial participants have included representatives from Constellation Energy, Draper Laboratories, Ember Corporation, EMC, Enernoc, Honeywell international, iBM Corporation, Lenox Hotel, Lincoln Laboratories, The Mathworks, inc., Millennial net, inc., MiTRE Corporation, Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL), nsTAR, Raymond Corporation, opower, Ruben Companies, schott solar north America, schlumberger, siemens Enterprise Communications, siemens Building Technologies, Textron Systems, Wells Fargo, Yokogawa Electric Co.

outReACH

To create visibility, outreach and communications with academic, industry, potential students and other collaborators, CisE continues to use state-of-the-art social networking and cloud based technologies.

CISe SeMInAR SeRIeS Co-SponSoReD wItH tHe DIVISIon oF SySteMS enGIneeRInG

DATE SPEAkER TITLE INSTITUTION Talk Title Hosting Professor

14-sep-12 lucy pao Joy Dorf Professor

University of Colorado Control of Wind Turbines: Accomplishments and Continuing Challenges

sean Andersson

28-sep-12 Stephen l. Smith

Assistant Professor

University of Waterloo optimizing Motion for Robotic Monitoring and information Gathering

Mac schwager

5-oct-12 Jian li Research staff Member

iBM Austin Research Lab

Big Data systems and Architecture Ayse Coskun

12-oct-12 ohad Shamir Postdoc Microsoft Machine Learning in Non-Classical Settings: information Trade-offs and Distributed Learning

venkatesh saligrama

19-oct-12 Stefano DiCairano

Principal Researcher

MERL Real-Time Constrained optimization frameworks for system-Level feedback Control in Mechatronics, Automotive and Aerospace

Christos Cassandras

26-oct-12 Marco pavone Assistant Professor

stanford University on stochastic optimal Control with Risk Constraints: Applications to Planetary Missions and Time Consistent formulations

Mac schwager

2-nov-12 yutaka yamamoto

Professor Kyoto University from sampled-Data Control to signal Processing – Beyond the shannon Paradigm

Christos Cassandras

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DAte SPEAkER TITLE INSTITUTION Talk Title Hosting Professor

9-nov-12 Geir Dullerud Professor University of illinois, Urbana-Champaign

on variance Reduction for simulation and Estimation of Markov Jump Processes

Calin Belta

16-nov-12 Shreyas Sundaram

Assistant Professor

University of Waterloo Robustness of Complex networks with implications for Consensus and Contagion

Mac schwager

29-nov-12 Clayton Scott Associate Professor

University of Michigan Classification with Asymmetric Label noise venkatesh saligrama

30-nov-12 Christoforos Hadjicostis

Professor University of Cyprus Average Consensus in Distributed Control systems with Dynamically Changing interconnections and Delays

Christos Cassandras

14-Dec-12 Moti Geva PhD Candidate Bar ilan University Internet QoS During Bandwidth DDoS Attacks

Ari Trachtenberg

25-Jan-13 Sham Kakade senior Research scientist

Microsoft Tensor Decompositions for Learning Latent variable Models

Prakash ishwar

1-feb-13 les Servi Principal Staff/Group Leader

MiTRE A Mathematical Approach to identifying and forecasting shifts in the Mood of social Media Users

Christos Cassandras

15-feb-13 liron yedidsion

Assistant Professor

Technion – israeli institute of Technology

Managing operations in a smart Home Environment

David starobinski

22-feb-13 Ada Gavrilovska

senior Research faculty

Georgia institute of Technology

Datacenter-Scale Cloud Management: Experience, insights and future Challenges

Ayse Coskun

1-Mar-13 Ani Hsieh Assistant Professor

Drexel University Collaborative Robot Tracking of Geophysical Flows: How Local Measurements Discover Global structures

sean Andersson

22-Mar-13 naira Hovakimyan

Professor University of illinois, Urbana-Champaign

L1 Adaptive Control and its Transition to Practice

Mac schwager

29-Mar-13 Satish narayanasamy

Assistant Professor

University of Michigan Taming Concurrency Ayse Coskun

5-Apr-13 yue lu Assistant Professor

Harvard University sampling and inference for spatiotemporal single-Photon imaging

Prakash ishwar

12-Apr-13 Frank Doyle Duncan and suzanne Melli-champ Chair in Process Control

University of California, santa Barbara

Robustness in Nature: Challenges and opportunities for the Control Community

Christos Cassandras

19-Apr-13 Vitus leung senior Member sandia Labs Task Mapping for non-Contiguous Allocations

Ayse Coskun

26-Apr-13 Sayan Mitra Assistant Professor

University of illinois, Urbana-Champaign

from simulation to verification of Hybrid and Distributed systems

Calin Belta

3-May-13 D. Matthew Andrews

Head Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs

Economics of sponsored Content in Mobile Data networks under Uncertain Demand

David starobinski

10-May-13 Michael langberg

Associate Professor

open University of israel

Three open Problems in network Communication

Ari Trachtenberg

15-May-13 Magnus egerstedt

schlumberger Professor

Georgia institute of Technology

interacting with Multi-Robot networks Christos Cassandras

3-Jun-13 elias Manolakos

Director University of Athens, visiting scholar, Harvard University

Computational Tools to Accelerate systems Biology investigations

ioannis Paschalidis

4-Jun-13 Georgios Fainekos

Assistant Professor

Arizona state University

Temporal Logic Testing and verification for Cyber-Physical systems

Calin Belta

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VISItInG CoMMIttee MeMBeRS

tAMeR BASAR, swanlund Endowed Chair, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering; CAs Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Center for Advanced study; Research Professor, Coordinated science Laboratory; Research Professor, information Trust institute, University of illinois at Urbana-Champaign

DIMItRIS BeRtSIMAS, Boeing Professor of operations Research and Co-Director, operations Research Center, Massachusetts institute of Technology

AnDy GRACe, vice President of Engineering and Design Automation, The MathWorks, inc.

yu-CHI (lARRy) Ho, Professor Emeritus, Harvard University; Chief scientist and Chaired Professor, Center for intelligent and networked systems, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

KIRK e. JoRDAn, iBM Distinguished Engineer, Emerging solutions Executive and Associate Program Director, Computational science Center, IBM T.J. Watson Research; Member, IBM Academy of Technology

p. R. KuMAR, Professor and College of Engineering Chair in Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University

MARK t. MAyBuRy, vice President and Chief Technology officer, The MiTRE Corporation

SteFAn MIeSBACH, vice President, Energy Division of siemens, siemens Enterprise Communications, Voice & Video Infrastructure

RoBeRt R. tenney, vice President, BAE systems Advanced information Technologies

pRAVIn VARAIyA, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer sciences, University of California, Berkeley

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Boston University Division of systems Engineering Annual Report 2012–2013

© 2013 Boston University

Photography: Boston University Photo services, except where otherwise noted.

Content: Cheryl stewart, Elizabeth flagg, Ruth Mason, Linda Grosser, Denise Joseph, SE staff, and SE faculty

Graphic Designer: Tess Mattern, www.tessmatterndesign.com

This report provides a description of the instructional and research activities of the Division of systems Engineering at Boston University during the 2012-2013 academic year. instructional activities are reported from the fall 2012 through summer 2013 semesters while scholarly activities and budget information are reported from July 1, 2012 to June 30, 2013.

Boston University’s policies provide for equal opportunity and affirmative action in employment and admission to all programs of the University.

for more information or to download this report as a PDf, please visit our website at www.bu.edu/se.

Front cover: This photo of a robot from the CoDEs lab won first prize in the SE Graduate Student Photo Contest. Photo credit: Yasaman Khazaeni

Below: (pictured left to right) sE graduate students Bowen Zhang, Evgeniy Goldis, Elli ntakou, Professor Michael Caramanis, sE graduate student Enes Bilgin. Photo credit: Cheryl Stewart

Back cover: BU graduation ceremony, May 2013: (pictured left to right in top photo) Professor Christos Cassandras, Yanfeng Geng; (pictured left to right in bottom photos) fuzhuo Huang, Professor ioannis Paschalidis, Tao (Reno) Wang, Professor Christos Cassandras