Computer Sciences Commons^™

Personalizing Student Graduation Paths Using Expressed Student Interests, Nicolas Dobbins, Ali R. Hurson, Sahra Sedigh

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper proposes an intelligent recommendation approach to facilitate personalized education and help students in planning their path to graduation. The goal is to identify a path that aligns with a student's interests and career goals and approaches optimality with respect to one or more criteria, such as time-to-graduation or credit hours taken. The approach is illustrated and verified through application to undergraduate curricula at the Missouri University of Science and Technology.

Optimal Adaptive Tracking Control Of Partially Uncertain Nonlinear Discrete-Time Systems Using Lifelong Hybrid Learning, Behzad Farzanegan, Rohollah Moghadam, Sarangapani Jagannathan, Pappa Natarajan

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This article addresses a multilayer neural network (MNN)-based optimal adaptive tracking of partially uncertain nonlinear discrete-time (DT) systems in affine form. By employing an actor–critic neural network (NN) to approximate the value function and optimal control policy, the critic NN is updated via a novel hybrid learning scheme, where its weights are adjusted once at a sampling instant and also in a finite iterative manner within the instants to enhance the convergence rate. Moreover, to deal with the persistency of excitation (PE) condition, a replay buffer is incorporated into the critic update law through concurrent learning. To address the vanishing …

Rafid: A Lightweight Approach To Radio Frequency Interference Detection In Time Domain Using Lstm And Statistical Analysis, Luke A. Smith, Vishesh Kumar Tanwar, Maciej Jan Zawodniok, Sanjay Kumar Madria

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Recently, the utilization of Radio Frequency (RF) devices has increased exponentially over numerous vertical platforms. This rise has led to an abundance of Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) continues to plague RF systems today. The continued crowding of the RF spectrum makes RFI efficient and lightweight mitigation critical. Detecting and localizing the interfering signals is the foremost step for mitigating RFI concerns. Addressing these challenges, we propose a novel and lightweight approach, namely RaFID, to detect and locate the RFI by incorporating deep neural networks (DNNs) and statistical analysis via batch-wise mean aggregation and standard deviation (SD) calculations. RaFID investigates the …

Lifelong Deep Learning-Based Control Of Robot Manipulators, Irfan Ganie, Jagannathan Sarangapani

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This study proposes a lifelong deep learning control scheme for robotic manipulators with bounded disturbances. This scheme involves the use of an online tunable deep neural network (DNN) to approximate the unknown nonlinear dynamics of the robot. The control scheme is developed by using a singular value decomposition-based direct tracking error-driven approach, which is utilized to derive the weight update laws for the DNN. To avoid catastrophic forgetting in multi-task scenarios and to ensure lifelong learning (LL), a novel online LL scheme based on elastic weight consolidation is included in the DNN weight-tuning laws. Our results demonstrate that the resulting …

Lifelong Learning Control Of Nonlinear Systems With Constraints Using Multilayer Neural Networks With Application To Mobile Robot Tracking, Irfan Ganie, S. (Sarangapani) Jagannathan

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This Paper Presents a Novel Lifelong Multilayer Neural Network (MNN) Tracking Approach for an Uncertain Nonlinear Continuous-Time Strict Feedback System that is Subject to Time-Varying State Constraints. the Proposed Method Uses a Time-Varying Barrier Function to Accommodate the Constraints Leading to the Development of an Efficient Control Scheme. the Unknown Dynamics Are Approximated using a MNN, with Weights Tuned using a Singular Value Decomposition (SVD)-Based Technique. an Online Lifelong Learning (LL) based Elastic Weight Consolidation (EWC) Scheme is Also Incorporated to Alleviate the Issue of Catastrophic Forgetting. the Stability of the overall Closed-Loop System is Analyzed using Lyapunov Analysis. the …

Analyzing Ground Motion Records With Cvi Fuzzy Art, Dustin Tanksley, Xinzhe Yuan, Genda Chen, Donald C. Wunsch

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper explores using Cluster Validity Indices Fuzzy Adaptative Resonance Theory (CVI Fuzzy ART) to cluster ground motion records (GMRs). Clustering the features extracted from a supervised network trained for predicting the structure damage results in less overfitting from the trained network. Using Cluster Validity Indices (CVIs) to evaluate the clustering gives feedback to how well the data is being classified, allowing further separation of the data. By using CVI Fuzzy ART in combination with features extracted from a trained Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), we were able to form additional clusters in the data. Within the primary clusters, accuracy was …

Multimodal Game-Based Learning In Post-Secondary Education, Nathan A. Vanos

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

In this age of unprecedented technological proliferation, educators have been given a unique opportunity to enhance classroom engagement. That opportunity is multimodal game-based learning (MGBL): classroom instruction through a combination of games and multiple modalities of information. Using today’s 3D systems and virtual reality tools, this concept can be explored to depths never before possible. The aim of this project was to design and implement an application that could be used to evaluate how MGBL could impact student engagement and learning, specifically at the post-secondary level. The application implemented during this work was a 3D and virtual reality Simulator for …

A Hierarchical Approach To Improve The Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm, Bryan J. Fischer

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

The ant colony optimization algorithm (ACO) is a fast heuristic-based method for finding favorable solutions to the traveling salesman problem (TSP). When the data set reaches larger values however, the ACO runtime increases dramatically. As a result, clustering nodes into groups is an effective way to reduce the size of the problem while leveraging the advantages of the ACO algorithm. The method for recombining groups of nodes is explored by treating the graph as a hierarchy of clusters, and modifying the original ACO heuristic to operate on a hypergraph. This method of using hierarchical clustering is significantly faster than the …

Digital Nudges: An Investigation Of Both Consumer And Designer Perspectives, Ja-Naé Duane

2023

This dissertation explores how knowledge of digital nudges impacts consumer decisions, and how consumer preferences based on that knowledge impacts design decisions. Paper 1 presents a systematic narrative literature review on the evolution of digital nudge literature. This investigation uncovers several themes and provides a basis for a revised definition of digital nudges and a taxonomy wheel of digital nudges. Paper 2 (co-authored with Jeffrey Livingston, Jonathan Ericson, and Patrick McHugh) investigates how knowledge about digital nudges impacts consumer preferences to have them within the digital experiences they use. This paper highlights how knowledge of digital nudges impact consumer online …

Strategies For Proper Security Practices In Small Financial Institutions, Adam Leffell

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Financial institutions remain high targets for threat actors because of potentially lucrativefinancial gains from security breaches. Information technology (IT) security professionals in financial institutions are concerned about weak security strategies that could lead to security breaches. Grounded in the technology acceptance model (TAM), the purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore strategies IT security professionals use to implement proper security practices to prevent security breaches. The participants were three IT security professionals from three different financial institutions that oversee the implementation of security policies and procedures. Data collection involved conducting semi-structured interviews and public documents. Through thematic …

Perceptions And Knowledge Of Information Security Policy Compliance In Organizational Personnel, Jesus M. Mosqueda

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

All internet connected organizations are becoming increasingly vulnerable to cyberattacks due to information security policy noncompliance of personnel. The problem is important to information technology (IT) firms, organizations with IT integration, and any consumer who has shared personal information online, because noncompliance is the single greatest threat to cybersecurity, which leads to expensive breaches that put private information in danger. Grounded in the protection motivation theory, the purpose of this quantitative study was to use multiple regression analysis to examine the relationship between perceived importance, organizational compliance, management involvement, seeking guidance, and rate of cybersecurity attack. The research question for …

Practical Ai Value Alignment Using Stories, Md Sultan Al Nahian

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

As more machine learning agents interact with humans, it is increasingly a prospect that an agent trained to perform a task optimally - using only a measure of task performance as feedback--can violate societal norms for acceptable behavior or cause harm. Consequently, it becomes necessary to prioritize task performance and ensure that AI actions do not have detrimental effects. Value alignment is a property of intelligent agents, wherein they solely pursue goals and activities that are non-harmful and beneficial to humans. Current approaches to value alignment largely depend on imitation learning or learning from demonstration methods. However, the dynamic nature …

Novel Architectures And Optimization Algorithms For Training Neural Networks And Applications, Vasily I. Zadorozhnyy

Theses and Dissertations--Mathematics

The two main areas of Deep Learning are Unsupervised and Supervised Learning. Unsupervised Learning studies a class of data processing problems in which only descriptions of objects are known, without label information. Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) have become among the most widely used unsupervised neural net models. GAN combines two neural nets, generative and discriminative, that work simultaneously. We introduce a new family of discriminator loss functions that adopts a weighted sum of real and fake parts, which we call adaptive weighted loss functions. Using the gradient information, we can adaptively choose weights to train a discriminator in the direction …

Machine Learning For Advancing Automation And Quality Control In Robotic Welding, Joseph Kershaw

Theses and Dissertations--Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Welding is a vital manufacturing process across a diverse range of industries to permanently join metallic components into needed assemblies. Though widely used and studied, the process is not fully understood due to the myriad of interconnected physics that present themselves during the welding process. Electrical, thermal, structural, and fluidic mechanics are simultaneously at work influencing one another to achieve the bonding that manufacturers desire. In addition to general manufacturing issues, such as tool wear or misalignment, micro-level changes to the material structure and composition can have cascading impacts on the final weld. This complexity makes it difficult, if not …

Generalizable And Adaptable Data-Driven Methods For Overcoming Barriers To Practical Industrial Condition Monitoring, Matthew B. Russell

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

The future of smart manufacturing relies on predictive maintenance systems that intelligently minimize expensive downtime through timely assessment of machine condition. Deep Learning (DL) has achieved excellent performance in industrial condition monitoring experiments, but the constraints of the manufacturing environment prevent many algorithms from being practically deployed on the factory floor. Ubiquitous sensing from online machines generates high velocity data streams that require new techniques for efficient transmission and storage. Despite these ever-increasing data lakes, many applications still lack the data needed for training DL fault diagnosis and wear tracking models since most data is unlabeled and only from nominal …

Biomarker Identification For Breast Cancer Types Using Feature Selection And Explainable Ai Methods, David E. La Rosa Giraud

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This paper investigates the impact the LASSO, mRMR, SHAP, and Reinforcement Feature Selection techniques on random forest models for the breast cancer subtypes markers ER, HER2, PR, and TN as well as identifying a small subset of biomarkers that could potentially cause the disease and explain them using explainable AI techniques. This is important because in areas such as healthcare understanding why the model makes a specific decision is important it is a diagnostic of an individual which requires reliable AI. Another contribution is using feature selection methods to identify a small subset of biomarkers capable of predicting if a …

Material Appearance Modeling For Physically Based Rendering, Alexis Benamira

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation 2023-2024

Photorealistic rendering focuses on creating images with a computer that imitates pictures of reallife scenes as faithfully as possible. To achieve this, rendering algorithms require incorporating accurate modeling of how light interacts with various types of matter. For most objects, this model needs to account for the scattering of the light rays. However, this model falls short when rendering objects of sizes smaller or comparable to the wavelength of the incident light. In this case, new phenomena such as diffraction or interference are observed and have been characterized in optics. Digital rendering of those phenomena involve different light representations than …

Machine Learning Algorithms For Molecular Signature Identification With High-Throughput Genome Sequencing Data, Jiao Sun

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Powered by the high-throughput genomic technologies, the RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) method is capable of measuring transcriptome-wide mRNA expressions and molecular activities in cells. Elucidation of gene expressions at the isoform resolution enables the detection of better molecular signatures for phenotype prediction, and the identified biomarkers may provide insights into the functional consequences of disease. This dissertation research focuses on developing advanced machine learning algorithms for mining large-scale RNA-Seq data in cancer transcriptome analysis. A platform-integrated model for transcript quantification (IntMTQ) is developed to improve the performance of RNA-Seq on isoform expression estimation. IntMTQ provides more precise RNA-Seq-based isoform quantification, and …

Tiny Language Models Enriched With Multimodal Knowledge From Multiplex Networks, Clayton Fields, Osama Natouf, Andrew Mcmains, Catherine Henry, Casey Kennington

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Large transformer language models trained exclusively on massive quantities of text are now the standard in NLP. In addition to the impractical amounts of data used to train them, they require enormous computational resources for training. Furthermore, they lack the rich array of sensory information available to humans, who can learn language with much less exposure to language. In this study, performed for submission in the BabyLM challenge, we show that we can improve a small transformer model’s data efficiency by enriching its embeddings by swapping the learned word embeddings from a tiny transformer model with vectors extracted from a …

A Survey And Evaluation Of Android-Based Malware Evasion Techniques And Detection Frameworks, Parvez Faruki, Rhati Bhan, Vinesh Jain, Sajal Bhatia, Nour El Madhoun, Rajendra Pamula

School of Computer Science & Engineering Faculty Publications

Android platform security is an active area of research where malware detection techniques continuously evolve to identify novel malware and improve the timely and accurate detection of existing malware. Adversaries are constantly in charge of employing innovative techniques to avoid or prolong malware detection effectively. Past studies have shown that malware detection systems are susceptible to evasion attacks where adversaries can successfully bypass the existing security defenses and deliver the malware to the target system without being detected. The evolution of escape-resistant systems is an open research problem. This paper presents a detailed taxonomy and evaluation of Android-based malware evasion …

A Survey And Evaluation Of Android-Based Malware Evasion Techniques And Detection Frameworks, Parvez Faruki, Rhati Bhan, Vinesh Jain, Sajal Bhatia, Nour El Madhoun, Rajendra Pamula

School of Computer Science & Engineering Faculty Publications

Android platform security is an active area of research where malware detection techniques continuously evolve to identify novel malware and improve the timely and accurate detection of existing malware. Adversaries are constantly in charge of employing innovative techniques to avoid or prolong malware detection effectively. Past studies have shown that malware detection systems are susceptible to evasion attacks where adversaries can successfully bypass the existing security defenses and deliver the malware to the target system without being detected. The evolution of escape-resistant systems is an open research problem. This paper presents a detailed taxonomy and evaluation of Android-based malware evasion …

E-Learning Course Recommender System Using Collaborative Filtering Models, Kalyan Kumar Jena, Sourav Kumar Bhoi, Tushar Kanta Malik, Kshira Sagar Sahoo, N. Z. Jhanjhi, Sajal Bhatia, Fathi Amsaad

School of Computer Science & Engineering Faculty Publications

e-Learning is a sought-after option for learners during pandemic situations. In e-Learning platforms, there are many courses available, and the user needs to select the best option for them. Thus, recommender systems play an important role to provide better automation services to users in making course choices. It makes recommendations for users in selecting the desired option based on their preferences. This system can use machine intelligence (MI)-based techniques to carry out the recommendation mechanism. Based on the preferences and history, this system is able to know what the users like most. In this work, a recommender system is proposed …

The Evolution Of Ai On The Commercial Flight Deck: Finding Balance Between Efficiency And Safety While Maintaining The Integrity Of Operator Trust, Mark Miller, Sam Holley, Leila Halawi

Publications

As artificial intelligence (AI) seeks to improve modern society, the commercial aviation industry offers a significant opportunity. Although many parts of commercial aviation including maintenance, the ramp, and air traffic control show promise to integrate AI, the highly computerized digital flight deck (DFD) could be challenging. The researchers seek to understand what role AI could provide going forward by assessing AI evolution on the commercial flight deck over the past 50 years. A modified SHELL diagram is used to complete a Human Factors (HF) analysis of the early use for AI on the commercial flight deck through introduction of the …

Improving Connectivity For Remote Cancer Patient Symptom Monitoring And Reporting In Rural Medically Underserved Regions, Esther Max-Onakpoya

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

Rural residents are often faced with many disparities when compared to their urban counterparts. Two key areas where these disparities are apparent are access to health and Internet services. Improved access to healthcare services has the potential to increase residents' quality of life and life expectancy. Additionally, improved access to Internet services can create significant social returns in increasing job and educational opportunities, and improving access to healthcare. Therefore, this dissertation focuses on the intersection between access to Internet and healthcare services in rural areas. More specifically, it attempts to analyze systems that can be used to improve Internet access …

Multi-Domain Adaptation For Image Classification, Depth Estimation, And Semantic Segmentation, Yu Zhang

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

The appearance of scenes may change for many reasons, including the viewpoint, the time of day, the weather, and the seasons. Traditionally, deep neural networks are trained and evaluated using images from the same scene and domain to avoid the domain gap. Recent advances in domain adaptation have led to a new type of method that bridges such domain gaps and learns from multiple domains.

This dissertation proposes methods for multi-domain adaptation for various computer vision tasks, including image classification, depth estimation, and semantic segmentation. The first work focuses on semi-supervised domain adaptation. I address this semi-supervised setting and propose …

Small Approximate Pareto Sets With Quality Bounds, William Bailey

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

We present and empirically characterize a general, parallel, heuristic algorithm for computing small ε-Pareto sets. The algorithm can be used as part of a decision support tool for settings in which computing points in objective space is computationally expensive. We use the graph clearing problem, a formalization of indirect organ exchange markets, as a prototypical example setting. We characterize the performance of the algorithm through ε-Pareto set size, ε value provided, and parallel speedup achieved. Our results show that the algorithm's combination of parallel speedup and small ε-Pareto sets is sufficient to be appealing in settings requiring manual review (i.e., …

A Secure And Distributed Architecture For Vehicular Cloud And Protocols For Privacy-Preserving Message Dissemination In Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks, Hassan Mistareehi

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

Given the enormous interest in self-driving cars, Vehicular Ad hoc NETworks (VANETs) are likely to be widely deployed in the near future. Cloud computing is also gaining widespread deployment. Marriage between cloud computing and VANETs would help solve many of the needs of drivers, law enforcement agencies, traffic management, etc. The contributions of this dissertation are summarized as follows: A Secure and Distributed Architecture for Vehicular Cloud: Ensuring security and privacy is an important issue in the vehicular cloud; if information exchanged between entities is modified by a malicious vehicle, serious consequences such as traffic congestion and accidents can …

Machine Learning Framework For Real-World Electronic Health Records Regarding Missingness, Interpretability, And Fairness, Jing Lucas Liu

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

Machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) techniques have shown promising results in healthcare applications using Electronic Health Records (EHRs) data. However, their adoption in real-world healthcare settings is hindered by three major challenges. Firstly, real-world EHR data typically contains numerous missing values. Secondly, traditional ML/DL models are typically considered black-boxes, whereas interpretability is required for real-world healthcare applications. Finally, differences in data distributions may lead to unfairness and performance disparities, particularly in subpopulations.

This dissertation proposes methods to address missing data, interpretability, and fairness issues. The first work proposes an ensemble prediction framework for EHR data with large missing …

The Basil Technique: Bias Adaptive Statistical Inference Learning Agents For Learning From Human Feedback, Jonathan Indigo Watson

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

We introduce a novel approach for learning behaviors using human-provided feedback that is subject to systematic bias. Our method, known as BASIL, models the feedback signal as a combination of a heuristic evaluation of an action's utility and a probabilistically-drawn bias value, characterized by unknown parameters. We present both the general framework for our technique and specific algorithms for biases drawn from a normal distribution. We evaluate our approach across various environments and tasks, comparing it to interactive and non-interactive machine learning methods, including deep learning techniques, using human trainers and a synthetic oracle with feedback distorted to varying degrees. …

Deep Learning Models For Ct Image Standardization, Md Selim

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

Multicentric CT imaging studies often encounter images acquired with scanners from different vendors or using different reconstruction algorithms. This leads to inconsistencies in noise level, sharpness, and edge enhancement, resulting in a lack of homogeneity in radiomic characteristics. These inconsistencies create significant variations in radiomic features and ambiguity in data sharing across different institutions. Therefore, normalizing CT images acquired using non-standardized protocols is vital for decision-making in cross-center large-scale data sharing and radiomics studies. To address this issue, we present four end-to-end deep-learning-based models for CT image standardization and normalization. The first two models require paired training data and can …