Ying Wu College of Computing (YWCC) was a notable presence at the 39th Annual AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence during the month of March. Distinguished Professor and Associate Dean for Research and External Relations Guiling “Grace” Wang served as Sponsorship Chair for this year’s event, in addition to co-coordinating YWCC’s sponsorship of the AAAI Student Hackathon with Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Brook Wu and serving as one of 10 Women Mentors for the women mentoring lunch program. She, furthermore, along with her Ph.D. candidate and lead author,…

The NJIT Rocketry Club is experimenting with a model that autonomously lands itself standing up, a la SpaceX, but accomplished through novel methods. SpaceX rockets fire their liquid fuel thrusters while descending. Other hobbyists have already tried to duplicate that method, so the Highlanders devised a unique approach: next year, they want to make the nose cone of their Project Lotus rocket unfold like flower petals, revealing a drone that takes control. It’s a new path in model rocketry, where nose cones typically pop open to expose a simple parachute. Hobbyists have done it this way…

NJIT’s forensics program made an impression at the 77th Annual American Academy of Forensic Sciences’ Conference in Baltimore’s Convention Center, unveiling new research and innovations that tackled this year’s conference theme, “Technology: A Tool for Transformation or Tyranny?” NJIT faculty and students presented on advances shaping the world of forensics, from research that could improve how forensic scientists estimate a person’s age at death, to technology demos of CSIxR — a virtual reality (VR) application developed at NJIT that simulates crime scenes scenarios to train crime scene…

New Jersey Institute of Technology distinguished professor David Bader was inducted recently into the Mimms Museum of Technology and Art Hall of Fame, located near Atlanta. The museum committee cited Bader, who also serves as director of NJIT’s Institute for Data Science, for “revolutioniz[ing] the computing industry through groundbreaking innovations that democratized high-performance computing.” His late-1990s supercomputer design combined off-the-shelf CPUs, high-performance networking, and the open-source Linux operating system. Until that time, supercomputers ran on proprietary…

The annual SIGCHI (Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction) Design Jam happened during an inspired nine-hour designathon beginning on Saturday, March 8 at 9 a.m. and finishing at 1 p.m. the following day. The event invites students studying human-computer interaction, digital design, web and information systems and cyberpsychology to form teams of four to create an interactive prototype (Figma, front-end code, paper prototype, etc.) that will solve a real user problem. The beginner-friendly UX hackathon-style happening is a collaboration between Ying Wu College of Computing (…

A keynote speaker at NJIT’s Women Designing the Future conference explained the imperative for holistic approaches to climate change policy, while another shared her tale of breaking through glass ceilings to develop innovative artificial intelligence software. The speakers — Rhiana Gunn-Wright, who orchestrated behind-the-scenes policymaking for the 2019 Green New Deal, and Danielle Feinberg, visual effects supervisor at Pixar — were on campus March 7 to help celebrate the 30th anniversary of the NJIT Murray Center for Women in Technology, and also for Women’s History Month. “We had two…

Assistant Professor Zhihao "Zephyr" Yao of the Department of Computer Science at NJIT's Ying Wu College of Computing has been named among IEEE Computing’s Top Early Career Professionals. This prestigious recognition is awarded to individuals worldwide who have demonstrated exceptional early-career achievements and are actively shaping the future of technology in the fields of artificial intelligence, software engineering and hardware. Professor Yao's research on enhancing trust and security within mobile systems has been recognized as a significant contribution to the development…

A competition to compare the brains of male vs. female fruit flies led New Jersey Institute of Technology researchers and two high school students to a second-place finish in the latest edition of the FlyWire Data Challenge, but more importantly the team learned new lessons about using artificial intelligence for setting up research with supercomputers. In the challenge, hosted earlier this year by Princeton University’s Neuroscience Institute, teams had to create efficient maps of the 19,000 synapse connections between neurons in tiny insect brains. The maps take the form of graphs, and the…

New Jersey Institute of Technology is rebuilding its second oldest residence hall to meet a burgeoning demand for housing at the growing public university. The new Oak Hall on Summit Street in Newark will contain 453 beds in 154 units — more than double the current totals. The units will take the form of apartments for either two or four students, complete with kitchens, living rooms and bathrooms. There will also be single units for resident assistants. The 15-story building will also feature an array of common areas, including a lounge for studying, a game room, conference rooms for…

A famous movie quote included the phrase, “…what I do have are a very particular set of skills.” The same can be said by Associate Professor Andrew Sohn in Ying Wu College of Computing’s (YWCC) department of computer science, whose course, CS 485: Intro to GPU Cluster Programming, may well be – technically - a class like no other in the U.S. due to his work with NASA, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, as well as his venture capital-backed startup company in Silicon Valley. According to Sohn, there are some schools teaching GPU (graphics processing unit) courses, which involve…