Posts By Matthew Whitaker

Kayshaunna Williams

I am a rising senior currently attending Jackson State University where I am pursing a bachelor’s degree in computer science. My research focuses on the vulnerabilities and security risks that are prevalent within IoT devices. While exploring IoT security this summer, I will be experimenting with different devices, via different techniques such as network probing and reverse engineering in hopes of educating consumers about the everyday risks involving many of their favorite smart devices.

Weekly Presentations

REU Symposium Poster PDF

Ray Ruitao Yan

My name is Ray Yan, and I am a rising junior from Purdue University, majoring in Computer Engineering. I am working with Dr. Fei Liu and Logan Lebanoff on the “Generating Privacy and Security Threat Summary for Internet of Things” project. The specific field I am working with my graduate assistant on is on vagueness analysis of privacy policies, which is done by training a machine learning algorithm on human data. This summer I assisted by learning Python and working on data analytics code for the human data.

Weekly Presentations

REU Symposium Poster PDF

Joseph Jacob Prause

Joseph is a Senior studying Computer Science at University of Central Florida. He is working with Dr. Wisniewski to develop an Android Application utilizing FitBit API. This application will be used to assist caretakers in monitoring patients by using of the shelf FitBit devices while giving the patient the ability to control which health information will be sent to their caretaker. This application can than be used to research if allowing for privacy customization does not interfere with patient monitoring, while maintaining privacy requests from the patient.

Weekly Presentations

REU Symposium Poster PDF

Patrick Sarver Dorton

Patrick is a Senior undergraduate student in Computer Science at the University of Central Florida. He is working with Dr. Turgut to further develop an Android Operating System to better protect and evaluate a user’s privacy. Android application, PrivacyGate, works by having the user choose to accept monetary offers in exchange for the access to the user’s information in a quid-pro-quo transactional interface. Patrick has been changing the system to instead ask the user how much they would be willing to pay to stop sharing their information.

Weekly Presentations

REU Symposium Poster PDF

Shanzila Hoque Chowdhury

I am Shanzila Chowdhury, a junior in North Carolina State University and Meredith College, located in Raleigh, North Carolina. I am pursuing B.S. in Electrical Engineering from NCSU, and B.A. in Mathematics from Meredith College. The project I will be working on this summer is “Internet of Things for Health and Wellness” under Dr. David Metcalf’s supervision in METIL. The project explores various clinical, home, wearable, and connected medical device technologies throughout the healthcare ecosystem. Specific tasks include evaluation of hardware, software, and network engineering solutions available currently and during pre-market engineering and development phases. I will also be a part of the team conducting human factors engineering analysis and evaluation across a wide spectrum of IoT solution including wearables for Johnson & Johnson, home IoT solution for the Lake Nona medical city WHIT project, and connected city in Pasco County, Florida.

Weekly Presentations

REU Symposium Poster PDF

Jillian Leigh Chandler

I am a junior mechanical engineering student at Michigan State University. I am working under Dr. Cho in the development of a chemiresistor-based gas sensor. When the sensor is exposed to a specific gas the electrical resistance changes as a result of a chemical reaction. A homemade multimeter will be used to measure the sensor’s power, current, and resistance as it is exposed to a gas. Feel free to contact me at chand117@msu.edu.

Weekly Presentations

REU Symposium Poster PDF

Tianbo Chen

I am Tianbo Chen, a rising junior at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I am pursuing a major in Electrical and Computer Engineering and a minor in Computer Science. My research here with Dr. Cliff Zou focuses on implementing a new type of captcha system which requires users to sort images based on abstract properties rather than having them type text. This new captcha system will help thwart automated attacks on the current text based captchas.

Weekly Presentations

REU Symposium Poster PDF

Brandon Alex Belna

Hello! I am a rising junior at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida, where I am pursuing double majors in mathematics and computer
science. This summer I am working with Dr. Greg Welch and Dr. Gerd Bruder to develop an interface which unifies AR scenes
generated by a Microsoft HoloLens with IoT devices. The application of this technology is for the AR world to use such
IoT devices to be able to interact with the real world, and to provide a much more immersive AR experience. You can contact me at
bbelna@stetson.edu.

Weekly Presentations

REU Symposium Poster PDF

Emma Ambrosini

I’m a rising junior at Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts, pursuing a B.S. in Computer Science.  This summer, I’m working under Dr. Guo-Jun Qi on the research of generative adversarial nets within the field of machine learning. Specifically, we are looking at Loss-Sensitive GANs, which work to more effectively and efficiently discern, through the discriminative model, between “real” data inputs and “fake” data generated by the generative model during the training process. The loss-sensitivity factor adds precision to the GAN in that it helps prevent more accurate generated data from being categorized as negative by the discriminator, and impacting the learning process.

Weekly Presentations

REU Symposium Poster PDF

Kim Chen


I am a rising junior at Stetson University, pursing a B.S. in Computer Science with minors in Mathematics and Digital Arts. This summer, I am working on creating a mobile application called “Carebitter” that uses the Fitbit API to authenticate a Fitbit user on another mobile users’ phone so that he or she can have access to various levels of the Fitbit user’s health information. The use of this application is to aid in studying the sharing behaviors of individuals when it comes to their health data and whom they are sharing it with, under the specific context of caregiving. If you have any questions, you can reach me at kchen@stetson.edu.

Weekly Presentations

REU Symposium Poster PDF

REU Symposium Presentation Powerpoint