Computer Sciences Commons^™

Prompting An Embodied Ai Agent: How Embodiment And Multimodal Signaling Affects Prompting Behaviour, Tianyi Zhang, Colin Au Yeung, Emily Aurelia, Yuki Onishi, Neil Chulpongsatorn, Jiannan Li, Anthony Tang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Current voice agents wait for a user to complete their verbal instruction before responding; yet, this is misaligned with how humans engage in everyday conversational interaction, where interlocutors use multimodal signaling (e.g. nodding, grunting, or looking at referred to objects) to ensure conversational grounding. We designed an embodied VR agent that exhibits multimodal signaling behaviors in response to situated prompts, by turning its head, or by visually highlighting objects being discussed or referred to. We explore how people prompt this agent to design and manipulate the objects in a VR scene. Through a Wizard of Oz study, we found that …

Empirically Exploring The Physical Realizability Of Adversarial Examples, Ruoyao Wen

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

The development of autonomous vehicles (AVs) has been accelerated by advancements in deep neural networks (DNNs), which power the complex perception systems necessary for safe and efficient real-world navigation. However, as AVs increasingly integrate into public transportation networks, the robustness of their perception systems against potential vulnerabilities is critical. Among these threats, adversarial attacks—particularly through the use of adversarial patches—pose significant risks. These patches are carefully crafted perturbations designed to mislead DNNs, potentially compromising AV safety by causing incorrect object recognition or misclassification.

While extensive research has demonstrated high attack success rates for adversarial patches in controlled digital environments, their …

Greening Intelligence: Why Ai Infrastructure And Governance Must Evolve Together, Heng Wang, Poh Seng Lee

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

AI infrastructure is evolving faster than the regulation and governance needed to ensure it serves public and planetary interests.

Disambiguart: A Neural-Based Inference Model For Knowledge Graph Disambiguation, Budhitama Subagdja, D. Shanthoshigaa, Ah-Hwee Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

One main challenge in constructing a knowledge graph (KG) is to deal with ambiguity. Specifically, an entity in the graph can be assigned with multiple meanings while two or more entities considered to have different meanings may actually be the same. Assigning an entity with the correct meaning may involve re-evaluation of its relevant contexts. This costly operation typically involves searching for other similar entities within the KG such that the context can be determined. In this paper, a new model called DisambiguART is proposed leveraging multi-channel matching and inference in a self-organizing neural network for sense disambiguation in knowledge …

Enhancing Deliberativeness: Evaluating The Impact Of Multimodal Reflection Nudges, Shun Yi Yeo, Zhuoqun Jiang, Anthony Tang, Simon Tangi Perrault

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Nudging participants with text-based reflective nudges enhances deliberation quality on online deliberation platforms. The effectiveness of multimodal reflective nudges, however, remains largely unexplored. Given the multi-sensory nature of human perception, incorporating diverse modalities into self-reflection mechanisms has the potential to better support various reflective styles. This paper explores how presenting reflective nudges of different types (direct: persona and indirect: storytelling) in different modalities (text, image, video and audio) affects deliberation quality. We conducted two user studies with 20 and 200 participants respectively. The first study identifies the preferred modality for each type of reflective nudges, revealing that text is most …

Query Understanding In Llm-Based Conversational Information Seeking, Yifei Yuan, Zahra Abbasiantaeb, Yang Deng, Mohammad Aliannejadi

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Query understanding in Conversational Information Seeking (CIS) involves accurately interpreting user intent through context-aware interactions. This includes resolving ambiguities, refining queries, and adapting to evolving information needs. Large Language Models (LLMs) enhance this process by interpreting nuanced language and adapting dynamically, improving the relevance and precision of search results in real-time. In this tutorial, we explore advanced techniques to enhance query understanding in LLM-based CIS systems. We delve into LLM-driven methods for developing robust evaluation metrics to assess query understanding quality in multiturn interactions, strategies for building more interactive systems, and applications like proactive query management and query reformulation. We …

Acccred: Improved Accountable Anonymous Credentials With Dynamic Triple-Hiding Committees, Sijiang Xie, Rui Shi, Yang Yang, Huiqin Xie, Yingjiu Li, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Accountable anonymous credentials protect user privacy while holding the accountability of ill-intentioned individuals, which is a critical feature for applications such as online payments and other financial services. Existing accountable anonymous credentials rely on a public committee of trustworthy members who are assumed not to collude and are well protected to perform privacy revocation. However, this assumption is unsound in blockchain-based cryptocurrency systems because the selected committees may involve nodes with significant stakes, and public nodes serving as committee members are vulnerable against targeted attacks from high-computing power adversaries. In this paper, we propose an improved accountable anonymous credential called …

Shipnavisim: Data-Driven Simulation For Real-World Maritime Navigation, Quang Anh Pham, Janaka Chathuranga Brahmanage, Akshat Kumar

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Maritime traffic management in busy ports faces growing challenges due to increased vessel traffic and complex waterway interactions. Strategies such as e-navigation by the International Maritime Organization aim to enhance navigation safety through traffic digitization. Maritime traffic simulation is essential for these systems, offering a virtual environment to model, analyze, and optimize traffic flows. Unlike road traffic, there are few simulators for maritime traffic, and they often lack realism and multi-ship interactions. In this paper, we (a) present ShipNaviSim, a data-driven maritime traffic simulator that utilizes a large-scale dataset over 2 years and electronic navigation charts to model vessel movements …

Few-Shot Learning On Graphs: From Meta-Learning To Llm-Empowered Pre-Training And Beyond, Yuan Fang, Yuxia Wu, Xingtong Yu, Shirui Pan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Graph representation learning has become central to many graph-based tasks, driving advancements in various domains such as web search, recommendation systems, and social network analysis. Traditionally, these methods rely on end-to-end supervised learning paradigms that require abundant labeled data, which can be costly and difficult to obtain. To address this limitation, few-shot learning on graphs has emerged as a promising approach, allowing models to generalize with minimal supervision and overcome data scarcity in real-world applications. This tutorial offers an in-depth exploration of recent advancements in few-shot learning for graphs, providing a comparative analysis of state-of-the-art methods and identifying future research …

Unlocking The Planning Capabilities Of Llms Through Maximum Diversity Fine-Tuning, Wenjun Li, Changyu Chen, Pradeep Varakantham

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated impressive task-solving capabilities through prompting techniques and system designs, including solving planning tasks (e.g., math proofs, basic travel planning) when sufficient data is available online and used during pre-training. However, for planning tasks with limited prior data (e.g., blocks world, advanced travel planning), the performance of LLMs, including proprietary models like GPT and Gemini, is poor. This paper investigates the impact of fine-tuning on the planning capabilities of LLMs, revealing that LLMs can achieve strong performance in planning through substantial (tens of thousands of specific examples) fine-tuning. Yet, this process incurs high economic, time, …

Flexfl: Flexible And Effective Fault Localization With Open-Source Large Language Models, Chuyang Xu, Zhongxin Liu, Xiaoxue Ren, Gehao Zhang, Ming Liang, David Lo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Fault localization (FL) targets identifying bug locations within a software system, which can enhance debugging efficiency and improve software quality. Due to the impressive code comprehension ability of Large Language Models (LLMs), a few studies have proposed to leverage LLMs to locate bugs, i.e., LLM-based FL, and demonstrated promising performance. However, first, these methods are limited in flexibility. They rely on bug-triggering test cases to perform FL and cannot make use of other available bug-related information, e.g., bug reports. Second, they are built upon proprietary LLMs, which are, although powerful, confronted with risks in data privacy. To address these limitations, …

Sigscope: Detecting And Understanding Off‑Chain Message Signing‑Related Vulnerabilities In Decentralized Applications, Sajad Meisami, Hugo Dabadie, Song Li, Yuzhe Tang, Yue Duan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In Web 3.0, an emerging paradigm of building decentralized applications or DApps is off-chain message signing, which has advantages in performance, cost efficiency, and usability compared to conventional transaction-signing schemes. However, message signing burdens DApp developers with extra coding complexity and message designing, leading to new security risks.This paper presents the first systematic study to uncover and characterize the security issues in off-chain message signing schemes and the DApps built atop them. We present a holistic static-analysis framework, SigScope, that uniquely combines the insights extracted from DApp front-end code (HTML and Javascript) off-chain and back-end smart contracts on-chain. We evaluate …

Real-Time Rectifying Flight Control Misconfiguration Using Intelligent Agent, Ruidong Han, Shangzhi Xu, Juanru Li, Elisa Bertino, David Lo, Jianfeng Ma, Siqi Ma

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Configurations are supported by most flight control systems, allowing users to control a flying drone adapted to complexities such as environmental changes or mission alterations. Such an advanced functionality also introduces a significant problem—misconfiguration settings. It may cause drone instability, threaten drone safety, and potentially lead to substantial financial loss. However, detecting and rectifying misconfigurations across different flight control systems is challenging because (1) (mis)configuration-related code snippets might be syntactically correct and thus hard to identify through traditional code analysis; (2) the response to each configuration varies under different flying scenarios.In this article, we propose and implement a novel rectification …

Hierarchical Frameworks For Scaling-Up Multi-Agent Coordination, Minghong Geng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Multi-agent reinforcement learning has emerged as a powerful framework for developing collaborative behaviors in autonomous systems. However, existing MARL methods often struggle with scalability in terms of both the number of agents and decision-making horizons. My research focuses on developing hierarchicalapproaches to scale up MARL systems through two complementary directions: structural scaling by increasing the number of coordinated agents and temporal scaling by extending planning horizons. My initial work introduced HiSOMA, a hierarchical framework integrating self-organizing neural networks with MARL forlong-horizon planning, and MOSMAC, a benchmark for evaluating MARL methods on multi-objective MARL scenarios. Building on these foundations, my recent …

Hierarchical Learning-Based Graph Partition For Large-Scale Vehicle Routing Problems, Yuxin Pan, Ruohong Liu, Yize Chen, Zhiguang Cao, Fangzhen Lin

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Neural solvers based on the divide-and-conquer approach for Vehicle Routing Problems (VRPs) in general, and capacitated VRP (CVRP) in particular, integrates the global partition of an instance with local constructions for each subproblem to enhance generalization. However, during the global partition phase, misclusterings within subgraphs have a tendency to progressively compound throughout the multi-step decoding process of the learning-based partition policy. This suboptimal behavior in the global partition phase, in turn, may lead to a dramatic deterioration in the performance of the overall decomposition-based system, despite using optimal local constructions. To address these challenges, we propose a versatile Hierarchical Learning-based …

The Efficacy Of Incorporating Artificial Intelligence (Ai) Chatbots In Brief Gratitude And Self-Affirmation Interventions: Evidence From Two Exploratory Experiments, Jing Wen Hung, Andree Hartanto, Adalia Y.H. Goh, Zoey K.Y. Eun, K. T. A. Sandeeshwara Kasturiratna, Zhi Xuan Lee, Nadyanna M. Majeed

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Numerous studies have demonstrated that positive psychology interventions, including brief interventions, can significantly improve well-being outcomes. These findings are particularly important given that many of these interventions are brief and self-administered, making them both accessible and scalable for large populations. However, the efficacy of positive psychology interventions is often constrained by small effect sizes. In light of advancements in generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), this study explored whether integrating AI chatbots into positive psychology interventions could enhance their efficacy compared to traditional self-administered approaches. Study 1 examined the efficacy of a gratitude intervention delivered through Snapchat's My AI, while Study 2 …

Behind The Screen: Understanding The Human Firewall In Cybersecurity, Arun Venkitanarayanan

Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security, and Cybersecurity

No abstract provided.

An Analysis Of Face Morphing Presentation Attacks Against Facial Recognition Systems, Joshua Breininger

Theses and Dissertations

Security has been a problem for human society for as long as history has been recorded. The identification of people is an ongoing, ancient battle, with a variety of methods that only become more complex with time. The Romans performed censuses, ciphers have been used for thousands of years in the pursuit of security, and in modern day we own identifications and governments keep track of who lives in their country with citizenship and licenses. The question of ”Who are you?” is vital for society to function, which opens up a massive field of potential for how to ask that …

Understanding The Impact Of Ransomware On Biotechnology, Tswvyim Vang

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Biotechnology encompasses the use of research on both biology and technology to create products that can advance in areas such as healthcare and agriculture. Because of the technology and products that arise from the use of biotechnology, the industry is especially targeted by cyber-attacks. A prominent type of cyber-attack that is utilized by cyber criminals on biotechnology is ransomware. The goal of this project is to determine the impact of ransomware on biotechnology. The research questions posed are: Q1) What are real examples of ransomware attacks that have occurred on biotechnology companies and what patterns can be identified by these …

On Bed Posture Recognition Using Deep Learning With Pressure Sensors, Farheen Akhter Ms

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

In healthcare applications such as disease prevention, sleep quality evaluation, and patient monitoring, bed posture recognition is essential. Using pressure sensor arrays placed on top of or embedded in mattresses, this study investigates the application of deep learning models for non-invasive posture classification. Although they have been widely employed, traditional machine learning approaches like support vector machines (SVM) and k-nearest neighbors (KNN) sometimes struggle with feature extraction and real-time performance necessitating considerable processing resources. I implemented a model using conventional approaches to get over these restrictions, then fine-tuned it using the following deep learning architectures for bed posture recognition: ResNet-50, …

Global Sporadic-E Prediction And Climatology Using Deep Learning, J. A. Ellis, Daniel J. Emmons, M. B. Cohen

Faculty Publications

Sporadic-E (E_s) is an ionospheric phenomenon defined by strong layers of plasma which may interfere with radio wave propagation. In this work, we develop deep learning models to improve the understanding of E_s, including the presence, intensity and height of the layers. We developed three separate models. The first, building off earlier work in (J. A. Ellis et al., 2024, link in AFIT Scholar, 10.1029/2023sw003669), includes only the main features from radio occultation (RO) measurements. The second adds to that time, date, location, geomagnetic and solar indices, solar winds, x-ray flux, weather and lightning. A …

Overcoming Motor Imagery Bci Illiteracy: Adaptive Decoding And Knowledge Transfer In Eeg-Based Brain-Computer Interfaces, Zaid Shuqfa Shuqfa

Thesis/ Dissertation Defenses

Brain Computer Interface (BCI), Also known as brain-machine interface (BMI) is a mean of controlling machines without the need to activate peripheral nerves or muscles. It has received the attention of research for decades. Motor imagery-based BCI is a paradigm that is characterized by its user friendliness where users can generate control commands at their freewill, without waiting for a que from the BCI module. Motor imagery brain–computer interface (MI–BCI) has considerable potential in increasing the quality of the lives for people with mobility impairment and the healthy ones as well. Though, its diffusion in application still has many pitfalls …

Large Language Model Enabled Mental Health App Recommendations Using Structured Datasets, Kris Prasad, Md Abdullah Al Hafiz Khan

Symposium of Student Scholars

The increasing use of large language models (LLMs) in mental health support necessitates detailed evaluation of their recommendation capabilities. This study compares four modern LLMs—GPT-4o, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and dataset-enhanced Gemma 2 and GPT-3.5-Turbo—in recommending mental health applications. We constructed a structured dataset of 55 mental health apps using RoBERTa-based sentiment analysis and keyword similarity scoring, focusing on depression, anxiety, ADHD, and insomnia. Standard LLMs demonstrated inconsistent accuracy and often relied on outdated or generic information. In contrast, our retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipeline enabled lower-cost models to achieve up to 55% higher accuracy than baseline models while recommending apps with …

Predicting Healthcare Service Quality Based On A Kalman-Optimized Bi-Lstm-Inspired Deep Learning Model, Mohammed K. Al-Khafaji, Eman S. Al-Shamery

Karbala International Journal of Modern Science

Health is one of the most important aspects of human well-being, and access to high-quality healthcare is essential for a good quality of life. Providing top-level health services at all times is crucial. However, the research in healthcare poses significant challenges due to the diversity and variations of medical practices across different hospitals. This paper aims to tackle the challenge of data missing and scattering during data collection. Then, the quality of services (QoS) offered by healthcare facilities will be analyzed and predicted from the patient's perspective. The model begins preprocessing data by data cleaning, handling missing values, and scattering …

The Role Of Individual Values In Bryant University's Sustainability Efforts, John Boccuzzi Iii

Honors Projects in Data Science

This research examines student, faculty, and staff perspectives on sustainability at Bryant University, with the goal of understanding how individual values align with the university's environmental initiatives. The objective is to assess perceptions of Bryant's current sustainability practices, explore how effectively these efforts are communicated across campus, and identify potential gaps between institutional action and community awareness. To achieve this, the study gathers qualitative data through an open-ended survey and applies sentiment analysis to interpret student attitudes toward sustainability. By analyzing these responses alongside Bryant's sustainability marketing efforts, this research will identify gaps between student engagement and institutional messaging The …

Infusing Aboriginal Perspectives In Cyber Education, John Shannahan, Mohiuddin Ahmed

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

While human factors are important in cyber security, the discipline has largely not explored incorporating indigenous perspectives—or, more specifically, in an Australian context, Aboriginal perspectives—in its curricula. In this paper, we introduce a promising approach for aligning Aboriginal perspectives with the needs of cyber security graduates and incorporating diverse perspectives into cyber degrees. The approach advocates for the centrality of good curriculum design fundamentals: backward design, constructive alignment, and student outcomes. The paper ends by reflecting on challenges and lessons from the first implementation and review of the material. It provides recommendations for other cyber practitioners exploring ways of incorporating …

Artificial Intelligence In Orthopedic Medical Education: A Comprehensive Review Of Emerging Technologies And Their Applications, Kyle Sporn, Rahul Kumar, Phani Paladugu, Tejas Sekhar, Swapna Vaja, Tamer Hage, Ethan Waisberg, Chirag Gowda, Ram Jagadeesan, Nasif Zaman, Alireza Tavakkoli

SKMC Student Presentations and Publications

Integrating artificial intelligence (AI) and mixed reality (MR) into orthopedic education has transformed learning. This review examines AI-powered platforms like Microsoft HoloLens, Apple Vision Pro, and HTC Vive Pro, which enhance anatomical visualization, surgical simulation, and clinical decision-making. These technologies improve the spatial understanding of musculoskeletal structures, refine procedural skills with haptic feedback, and personalize learning through AI-driven adaptive algorithms. Generative AI tools like ChatGPT further support knowledge retention and provide evidence-based insights on orthopedic topics. AI-enabled platforms and generative AI tools help address challenges in standardizing orthopedic education. However, we still face many barriers that relate to standardizing data, …

Improving Image Quality In Electrical Capacitance Tomography Using Otsu Thresholding, Josiah Nombo

Tanzania Journal of Engineering and Technology (TJET)

Electrical Capacitance Tomography (ECT) is an imaging technique used in industrial process monitoring, particularly for monitoring and measuring the composition of multiphase flows. Despite its widespread application, the commonly used Linear Back Projection (LBP) algorithm often produces low-quality images due to its limited ability to handle high permittivity contrasts and nonlinearities. This study investigates the use of Otsu thresholding as a post-processing technique to enhance ECT image quality. By maximizing inter-class variance in the image histogram, Otsu thresholding improves contrast, clarity, and structural definition, enabling more effective segmentation of oil and gas components in multiphase flows. The proposed Otsu-based reconstruction …

Artificial Intelligence Applications For Grid-Connected Solar Inverters, Utkirjon Ubaydullaev, Sarvinoz Mirzaeva, Hasan Mustafoev

Chemical Technology, Control and Management

The increasing global demand for renewable energy has highlighted the importance of grid-connected solar inverters in ensuring efficient and stable power conversion. However, challenges such as fluctuations in solar energy generation, grid disturbances, and power quality issues necessitate advanced control strategies. The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into solar inverters presents a transformative solution, enhancing performance, adaptability, and reliability in real-world applications.

This review explores the role of AI techniques, including machine learning (ML), deep learning (DL), fuzzy logic, and reinforcement learning (RL), in optimizing key inverter functionalities such as maximum power point tracking (MPPT), fault detection, power quality enhancement, …

Development Of Fuzzy Ontology For Explainable Artificial Intelligence For Decision-Making In Fuzzy Environment, Pavel Kosov

Chemical Technology, Control and Management

In modern artificial intelligence systems, there is an acute need to understand the decision-making logic of "black box" algorithms. Our research proposes an innovative method for increasing the transparency of such systems through the formalization of fuzzy explanatory mechanisms. We have developed an extension of existing ontological approaches by introducing the concept of fuzziness into the structure of explanatory properties, which allows overcoming the fundamental limitations of traditional XAI methods. The proposed formalization is based on the theory of collective mental models and principles of fuzzy logic, providing a more accurate reflection of uncertainty and subjectivity in expert knowledge. Our …