“Data science is something that’s quite interesting to me … and I knew how important it was working in my neck of the woods, but what I didn’t really quite understand was how important it is right now to everything,” said Gilmer, who presented the Clavius Distinguished Lecture at Fordham on Nov. 16—the first held since the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It is really the glue, the binder of nearly every academic department— from English to psychology to biology to the hard sciences. It is opening up profound new venues across the board.”

Held in Lecture Room 3-03 at the Law School, the lecture drew more than 80 students, faculty, and guests. Since 2010, the Clavius Distinguished Lecture Series, has brought scholars, researchers and entrepreneurs to Fordham to share their knowledge with the community and the general public. The series is named after Christopher Clavius, S.J., a 16th-century mathematician and astronomer who helped develop the Gregorian calendar.

Using Data Science in Energy

Gilmer said that data science in the oil and gas industries is used to help predict what types of rocks are under the surface, locate where oil and gas might be found, prescribe how to frack a well for the best return and lowest environmental impact, track supply and demand, and predict future needs and prices.

Gilmer gave some examples of how utilizing data analytics can make a company more efficient and effective. For example, data analytics can help a company learn how to frack oil and gas with the least amount of wells into the ground.

“How do you go out there and do it with a minimum number of well bores on the surface because you have a surface impact when you’re doing any of these things, and then also trying to figure out how you’re going to keep your aquifers safe—those are all pieces in the dynamics of this project,” he said.

Utilizing informatics can also help a company operate more efficiently, Gilmer said. His software company does a lot of work in seismics—exploring below the ground to find rocks that produce oil and gas.

“In this case, [our machine]was looking for discontinuity—discontinuity in these waveforms—it was going out there and it was a way of being able to very quickly identify fault patterns [in the Earth],” he said. “The machine went out there to find the faults—this would have taken a geologist a month to figure all this stuff out.”

With that data, they were able to see how production was impacted by faults.

“You can see that the closer you were to a fault, the less production you were making,” he said.

He also highlighted how informatics can be used to track and improve upon the environmental impact of a project.

Still, Gilmer told the students that while data was essential, they should use it to address bigger problems, not get stuck in the details.

“Whether you’re a physicist, a chemist, a geologist, or what have you—you should not look at your job as being a series of formulas,” he said. “You should be thinking about how to address real problems and how to think about them.” This, he said, is “where greatness comes from.”

In addition to sharing information about data science at lectures like this one, Gilmer—who was named an EY Entrepreneur of the Year in Texas in 2012—is also committed to helping others learn more about it. He established the data analytics program at the University of Texas El Paso, with D. Frank Hsu, Ph.D., the Clavius Distinguished Professor of Science at Fordham, who also attended UTEP.

“If you don’t have the interest in doing it yourself, become good friends with somebody who’s really good at this stuff, because sometime during your lifetime, sometime in the next five or 10 years, you’re going to have a big need or a big use for these skill sets,” he said.

From Fracking to Film

While Gilmer’s background is as a geoscientist who worked in energy, he’s also had a passion for film, calling it “one of the best ways of storytelling.” He’s a managing partner of Redbud Studios and AHuevo Films, which produces and finances feature films and streaming content. Their upcoming film Alina of Cuba, starring James Franco and Ana Villafane, has made headlines as it tells the story of Fidel Castro’s daughter and her defection from Cuba.

Gilmer said he’s tried to also incorporate analytics into his film company’s work.

“We’ve been producing films for the last few years, and I’ve been trying to figure out how to do it in a smarter way,” he said. “It’s an industry that does not have a lot of good data, it doesn’t have easy access to [the data]—it is a closed-off system. It’s a very difficult business environment in which to go out there and make wise decisions.”

They’ve had to get creative to gather feedback from their audience, such as pushing out requests for Amazon reviews on social media.

“It’s really a business of building up a lot of different proxies with regards to figuring out how any of these things are going to work,” he said.

Hsu said that this was one of the best talks he’s heard, particularly in terms of the variety of topics discussed. He also joked that Gilmer—or one of his students—had their next task laid out for them: “Create a new field of movie informatics.”

The 2021 Tri-State ExploreCSR workshop, which began in February and wrapped up last month, aims to fix that.

The workshop brought together students and faculty from Fordham, the Stevens Institute of Technology, the University of Connecticut, and Google to learn or brush up on coding and computer science-related research. On April 23, the group celebrated with online presentations, a panel discussion, and poster board presentations on team projects.

Funding and Participation from Google

Ying Mao, Ph.D., an assistant professor of computer science at Fordham, said the project, which was funded by an $18,000 grant from Google, was created to break down barriers that students from all underrepresented populations might feel are keeping them from entering computer science.

“When we wrote our proposal, we actually broadened the domain of who we wanted to offer it to; usually it’s just for women. We included first-generation students who might not have imagined doing something in computer science,” he said.

The April event not only brought the students together, it allowed them to hear from experts in the field. It started off with a keynote address, Combinatorial Fusion Analysis: A new paradigm for combining multiple scoring systems, which was delivered by Frank Hsu, Ph.D., the Clavius Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at Fordham. He was followed by Adam Michael Wood of Google, who talked about Tensorflow, an open-source software platform that can be used to create machine learning models.

A panel discussion on the challenges and opportunities in computer science featured Fordham’s computer science professors Gary M. Weiss, Ph.D. and Damian Lyons, Ph.D., and the Stevens Institute’s Ye Yang, Ph.D., and Grace Bae, Ph.D.

Organizers put out the call for the in the beginning of the year and received 220 applicants from undergraduate students enrolled at 16 colleges throughout the tri-state region. Some were computer science majors looking for research opportunities; others were non-computer science majors. After an initial meeting on Feb. 22, the 58 chosen students were divided into 18 groups that met weekly to report on their progress.

Instilling Confidence

“Some of the research is very introductory level because the students are not from computer science backgrounds. One of my students was an economics major, so we designed a beginning research project so they could learn what computer science research looks like, to help them build self-confidence,” Mao said.

“They all showed how they learned to code and analyze the data, and since every group contained at least three students, how learned how to communicate with each other to build the project.”

Collaborating with Students from Other Universities

One of the students who attended was Navpreet Kaur, a junior at Fordham College at Lincoln Center. A math/economics interdisciplinary major, Kaur got involved in the field in earnest this fall, when she took her first class as part of a computer science minor. Under the guidance of Fordham’s Juntao Chen, Ph.D., the Ozone Park, Queens, resident worked with fellow Fordham student Maria Jara, as well as a student from Carnegie Mellon University and one from Hofstra University. Their project was titled “Fairness and Privacy in the Optimal Transport for Resource Allocation.”

The project involved applying a mathematical model used to determine how to allocate resources such as workers to places such as factories and mines so that they’re allocated fairly as well as efficiently. It’s the kind of formula that could also be applied to the distribution of vaccines.

“It seemed like a good opportunity to get experience, which I thought would help with internships or grad school, and just understanding how comp/sci really works,” she said.

Participating in the program introduced her to Fordham’s STEM program, and Kaur said she wants to take Dr. Chen up on the offer for more research opportunities next year. Working on the project made her feel confident that she’d be ready to participate in a larger research project that otherwise might seem overwhelming.

“I’m also glad we did it virtually since we were able to work with students from different universities with different backgrounds and different years,” she said. Working together with people with different experiences was very helpful.”

Mao said he plans to apply again for the grant next year and hold another workshop at a date to be determined.

For Joshua Schrier, Ph.D., chemistry research is the next frontier.

“An emerging area of chemistry is finding ways to create a machine-readable representation of the things in the world, like the structures of molecules or chemical processes, and then using those digital representations for computer simulations and machine learning,” he said.

“Once we have the results of chemical experiments in a digital form, we can unleash the tools of data science to make smarter predictions. By combining this with robots that can conduct new experiments, we create the possibility for a virtuous cycle: Every new data point gives our model a better picture of the world, and algorithms can select new data points that improve that picture and dispatch experimental instructions to a robot to collect new data.”

Schrier joined the faculty in 2018 as the first Bepler Chair in Chemistry, and has devoted much of his time to his study “Discovering reactions and uncovering mechanisms of perovskite formation,” a $7.4 million project funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Perovskites are a class of minerals that can be used in low-cost, high-performance solar cells, x-ray detectors, and lighting. The goal of the project is to develop software and hardware to automate scientific research, using perovskites as a test case.

Robot-Created Minerals

He and fellow researchers at Haverford College, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and MIT have developed a system dubbed RAPID (Robot-Accelerated Perovskite Investigation and Discovery) to create perovskite minerals. Perovskites are minerals composed of both inorganic and organic materials, which makes them are particularly attractive.

“You can replace the organic building unit with hundreds of thousands of different possible molecules. Every time you do that, you get a different crystal structure. It’s kind of like molecular Legos,” said Schrier.

“Our efforts are aimed at the early stage of materials development; we’re not making new solar cells themselves, but we are discovering the materials that will enable better solar cells. It’s like we’re not building a house, but we’re inventing new kinds of bricks you could use to build a house,” he said.

Exploring new structures is important, he said, because by changing the structure of the perovskites, you change the way they interact with light, their electrical properties, and their stability. This is important, he said, because one of the key limitations of existing perovskite solar cells is a lack of long-term stability.

In the three years since the project got underway, Schrier said they’ve synthesized roughly 70 perovskites and performed over 10,000 experiments. While that’s useful, he said, what’s equally important is that RAPID is learning how to do the experiments itself.

2020 Findings

In “Robot-Accelerated Perovskite Investigation and Discovery,” an article published in June 2020 by Chemistry of Materials, he and his colleagues detail how they adapted perovskite syntheses for the RAPID system. Given a set of starting ingredients, researchers were able to conduct 96 randomly chosen experiments in four hours. That created a data set that the computer was able to then use to predict the success of future experiments.

Although he’s based in New York City and RAPID is housed at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Schrier is able to work with colleagues in California remotely and his students are likewise able to analyze data safely from their homes. This paper was one of the top-20 most-downloaded papers in 2020, according to the journal.

This initial set of experiments is sufficient to predict the results of any subsequent experiments for that chemical system with 80-90% accuracy. In subsequent work published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry C, Schrier and co-authors Mary Kate Caucci, FCRH ’20; Michael Tynes, FCRH ’17, GSAS ’20; and Aaron Dharna, FCRH ’16, GSAS ’20, were able to show that researchers can also extrapolate to entirely new sets of chemical ingredients that have never been seen before, with about 40% accuracy.

“With no knowledge about this new chemical system, just the things that we’ve learned about in the past about other chemical systems, being right 40% of the time is good enough,” Schrier said. “This gives us a higher probability of success on our first batch of 96 experiments. We don’t need to be perfect, we only need to find one success. To use an analogy, machine learning lets us pick better lottery tickets, and the robot lets us buy more lottery tickets. Putting them together gives us the best chance of winning.”

Randomness and Removing Bias

What’s surprised Schrier the most about recent findings is the effectiveness of randomness. Simply selecting the initial experiments randomly often yields better machine learning models than data chosen by human experts, he said.

This focus on randomness has important implications for artificial intelligence, because if human-generated data is used to create machine learning models, he said, we run the risk of creating machines that repeat our own biases. He explored the importance of removing human “fingerprints” in “Anthropogenic biases in chemical reaction data hinder exploratory inorganic synthesis,” which he published in 2019 in the journal Nature.

“This is at odds with the hypothesis-driven experiment design we teach students from grade school through university. What we’ve found is that humans tend to get stuck in a rut, and so instead of exploring all of the possibilities, they just focus on a few,” he said.

“The advantage of using robots is that they do what we tell them, even if it is just random. In this way, we remove our conceptual fingerprints from the data collection process and take a more unbiased look at the world.”

In the Classroom with Non-Science Majors

Although creating minerals from scratch is exciting, work with students is just as rewarding, Schrier said. In addition to mentoring six Fordham undergraduate research students, this fall, he taught a new course called Drug Discovery from Laboratory to the Clinic, which was especially fortuitous given the intense interest in the development of COVID-19 vaccines. The course is part of Fordham’s Manresa Scholars program and combines science with the Eloquentia Perfecta core.

Reading material for the class, which was for non-science majors, included analyses of Remdesivir, articles on clinical trials for hydroxychloroquine in the New England Journal of Medicine, analysis of the ethics of Moderna’s vaccine distribution plan, and information about the regulatory process of drug approval.

Outside speakers included a research scientist from the National Institute of Health and a pet-pharmaceutical startup entrepreneur who provided insights into the long path from basic research to sustainable business.

“The class just sort of wrote itself given the unfolding of world events that were occurring in the fall. The intersection of science, policy, business, and ethics is a fertile ground for engaging students,” he said.

“Fordham students have a rich intellectual toolbox for these types of discussions. In their core requirements, they’re taking philosophy, theology, economics, political science, and can apply this to the problem at hand. They’re quick to start a debate with, ‘No, no, no. Kant says you shouldn’t objectivize humans. We can’t do this.’”

Meanwhile, RAPID continues to churn out perovskites. Schrier is collaborating with Clavius Distinguished Professor of Computer Science“Mary Kate Caucci” “Michael Tynes” “Aaron Dharna” “Frank Hsu” “Yuanqing Tang”, to look at new ways of performing automated quality control for scientific experiments. He is also working with Rodolfo Keesey, FCRH ’20, in conducting data analysis geared toward using RAPID for other types of perovskite growth methods.

And in a collaboration with Fordham College at Rose Hill senior Lillian Cain and Michael Tynes that was published in a recent issue of the Journal of Chemical Education, Schrier described how algorithms for planning chemical experiments can be incorporated into a first-year general chemistry lab.

“We’re developing tools for doing science in a new way—not just perovskites—and it’s exciting to see Fordham students at the forefront of this new approach,” he said.

Thanks to a new app created by Fordham’s Graduate School of Education (GSE) and Department of Computer and Information Sciences, parents of children who are in distress will have an easier time finding resources in New York City.

The app is being introduced to three Bronx Community schools that have partnerships with the GSE. It will provide the schools’ social workers and guidance counselors with quick access to services that parents might need if their children are facing domestic challenges—an eviction, or other household unrest.

“If a child has pressing problems—say they spent a night in a shelter, or are living in an abusive situation—they’re not exactly going to be the first one raising their hand to answer questions,” said Anita Batisti, Ph.D., associate dean for educational partnerships at the GSE.

“Do they need a shelter that can accommodate a pet? Do they need shelters just for single mothers or for a family? Do they have health needs? The app offers more specifics than what we’ve been doing in the past, which is sending parents the contact person and hours for facilities,” Batisti said.

Harnessing the Power of Data

The app’s development began in 2015 with a $10,000 grant from Lilian Wu, Ph.D., a former member of the Fordham Board of Trustees and program executive for IBM Global University Programs. When former Board of Trustee Chairman John Tognino told her about Batisti’s partnership, Wu suggested they harness the power of the company’s Watson Blue Mix platform to help.

“There are so many real-world problems that have a three-way piece to it,” said Wu, an expert on data analytics who delivered the Clavius Distinguished Lecture at Fordham in 2011.

“The faculty wants to research problems and develop solutions, and students need to learn how to find solutions. And then there are residents—in this case the families with so many needs that the elementary school can’t possibly produce these answers with a handful of staff persons. It’s not easy to find good projects, but this is a good one.”

Students working with Frank Hsu, Ph.D., Clavius Distinguished Professor of Science and Professor of Computer and Information Science, interviewed social workers and principals to get a sense of what kinds of questions the app would need to answer. Hsu’s Laboratory of Informatics and Data Mining has been conducting research on cognitive computing for several years using IBM Watson system through the cloud.

A Community in Need

Dawn Johnson Adams, the center’s director of the community school program at Community School PS85X, and Cesarina Javier, the center’s social worker, also worked closely with the staff of the school, just south of the Rose Hill campus, on the project.

The school has 1,116 students who attend pre-k through fifth grade. Poverty is a significant issue; last year, 93 percent of students received free or reduced lunch. Many parents work two or three jobs, so she said that if they come to see her, they really need help because they’ve taken off from work. It’s hard to set up follow-up meetings to connect them to food pantries, mental health services, clothes, or the nearest emergency room. Nailing down accurate information quickly can be a challenge.

“I’ve tried to help a family with food stamps. I called the general number, they gave me another number, and when I called that number, they told me to call the general number.  You would be amazed how difficult the system is,” said Javier, who works as a bilingual social worker there.

“If I get a parent in for 15 minutes, I want to be able to actually help them. I don’t want them to leave feeling worried or that they wasted their time.”

PS 85X principal Ted Husted said that things get particularly challenging when students, 16 percent of whom live in temporary shelters, are dealing with multiple issues at once. On top of an unstable housing situation, a student might have family member who is incarcerated or living in another country.

He hopes artificial intelligence will be better at weaving all these issues together.

“I was impressed with the Fordham students when they interviewed us,” he said. “They had an opportunity to do something with their education that really has an impact on society.”

“Even when my social workers work as a team, giving good advice is very labor intensive. My expectation with this app is, they’ll be able to serve more parents because they’ll be able to get the information faster.”

The app is still in beta mode. And although it is designed to be a hyperlocal resource oriented toward specific New York City schools, Hsu and Batisti are hopeful that it will eventually be scaled up and expanded.

“This kind of collaboration is what Fordham is striving for,” Hsu said.

“If we ask these questions, what kind of answers are we going to get? In the course of working on this project, we found out that some of the websites in New York City are not as good as they should be. We can improve that with this kind of research. That’s the significance of this project.”

August marks one year since students from the Brazil Scientific Mobility Program (BSMP) arrived on campus. Run by the Institute of International Education and supported by the Brazilian government, BSMP places top-achieving junior and senior students pursuing STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) at U.S. colleges and universities to gain global experience, improve their language skills, and increase international dialogue in science and technology.

The Fordham cohort—Aryadne Guardieiro Pereira Rezende, Tulio Aimola, Caio Batista de Melo, and Dicksson Rammon Oliveira de Almeida—have spent the year studying and researching alongside Fordham students and faculty.

“Fordham is a wonderful university. It teaches you to grow not just as a professional, but also as a person. I loved my semesters there,” said Guardieiro, a computer science major from Uberlandia, Minas Gerais.

Guardieiro worked with Damian Lyons, PhD, professor of computer and information science, on the use of drones to hunt and kill Aedes aegypti mosquitos, which spread diseases such as dengue and Zika virus, both of which are significant problems in Brazil.

“Different fields were available to research here,” said Batista de Melo, a computer science major from Brazil’s capital, Brasília. Batista de Melo researched with Frank Hsu, PhD, the Clavius Distinguished Professor of Science and Professor of Computer and Information Science, in Fordham’s Laboratory of Informatics and Data Mining.

“Our project used IBM’s Watson, which might not have been possible to use in Brazil, since it is such a new technology.”

The program has benefitted both Fordham and Brazilian students alike, said Carla Romney, DSc, associate dean for STEM and pre-health education, who oversaw BSMP at Fordham. Because it’s difficult for science students to devote a full semester to travel, the experience served as a sort of “reverse study abroad” for Fordham students.

“Having international students in the classroom has been an amazing internationalization experience for Fordham students, too,” Romney said. “It brings a different atmosphere into the classroom when you have students with widely divergent viewpoints and experiences. You get to know other cultures, other worlds.”

BSMP students complete two semesters of academic study at an American institution, followed by a summer of experiential learning in the form of internships, research, volunteering, or other types of “academic training.”

Earlier this summer, the four were joined by an additional 17 BSMP students who had been at other American colleges and universities and who took up residence at Fordham to undertake internships and positions at various New York City companies and organizations.

The experience was challenging both academically as well as personally, said Oliveira, a computer science major from Recife, Pernambuco who researched smartwatch applications in the Wireless Sensor and Data Mining (WISDM) lab with Gary Weiss, PhD, associate professor of computer and information science.

“The cultural shock was really unexpected, and for several months it made me feel uneasy,” Oliveira said. “Over time, I learned to overcome it. Being from a predominantly tropical country, I considered the winter to be the greatest challenge of all.”

In addition to culture shock, there was the inevitable loneliness, which Guardieiro said she felt deeply at times. However, she felt supported by her academic adviser and fellow students, and eventually came to love her newfound independence.

“I learned to never lose an opportunity to do what I needed or wanted to just because I did not have company to do so,” she said. “I learned to expose myself to new—and not always comfortable—experiences, and I was amazed with the results I got. I took dancing classes with great teachers, visited places like Wall Street companies and all kinds of museums, and visited many states by myself.”

The Brazilian government recently put a one-year moratorium on the scholarship exchange program, but Romney said Fordham would continue its partnership with the program when it resumes.

When it does, Guardieiro has advice ready for future Fordham-BSMP students:

“Don’t be afraid to do everything you want to… This kind of experience is given to us to learn as much as we can.”

 You’ll be sitting on a panel about education and cybersecurity. With the number of cybersecurity jobs expected to increase by 37 percent over the next 6 years, how would you describe a good cybersecurity education today?

Cybersecurity education has become an interdisciplinary program. It’s primarily a science and technology, but it’s also related to policy and society. There are many aspects, including cognitive science, psychology, political science, economics, sociology, law, as well as computer and information science. But you cannot just teach students the skills; you have to have the methodologies. A good cybersecurity education will provide the foundations, but above all students have to learn how to keep learning.

What are some of the newer issues to be discussed this year?

Insider threats. A company not only has to have a policy on cybersecurity that includes instant response, but they also have to prevent or predict something that might happen. Many of those intrusions are really coming from the inside. It’s called exploitation of the company’s cyber infrastructure. You can screen people before they get into the company, but you should also be able to identify and forsee people who may become disgruntled and might want to cause the company harm.

How about cyber health?

When we talk about cybersecurity we’re not just talking about cyberattack, we’re also talking about cyber exploitation, which may be happening to you and you’re not aware of it. That’s why we need to be aware of our cyber health. When you use a computer in a library and you don’t log out or delete your searches, you leave a fingerprint and people can get into your account. That’s not good for your cyber health.

What are some of the perennial topics?

Critical infrastructure remains very important, because so much of it, like the power grid, is connected to the internet. There’s been much progress, but there’s much more to do. Much of the critical infrastructure has been there for 50 to 100 years, and it’s difficult to revise or reinvent all of it. It also relates to what we call the “Internet of Things.” There are more physical devices connected to the internet than ever before—and that should also be a concern for cybersecurity professionals and policy makers. 

Is there money to be made amidst all the risk?

If the cybersecurity industry is to move ahead, it’ll have to attract more investment. Up until now, there haven’t been that many cybersecurity companies that have an IPO. It’s only recently become recognized as a place to invest, so we’ll be talking about venture capitalism and how to attract investment. Cybersecurity is so hot that every investor is trying to get in to it, but it’s not easy to make a decision on where to invest. From a tech point of view, cybersecurity is a good investment, but from a financial investment standpoint the risk may be pretty high. Many startups fill a niche, but if the niche is suddenly gone, it cannot sustain the growth. I’d say that cybersecurity is very different from a trendy niche or a traditional IT technology.

And throughout the project, which is focusing on questions about regulations in public housing, Watson learns as the students learn.

“I believe we’re the first college in the United States to bring together multiple disciplines to collaborate on a Watson system for an undergraduate research project,” said Erin Burke, assistant dean at Fordham College Rose Hill and director of undergraduate research and Fordham’s pre-law program.

The Watson project merges a graduate course on cognitive computing with an undergraduate pre-law tutorial on how to use the system. The collaborative courses are being taught by Frank Hsu, PhD, and Burke. Hsu is the Clavius Distinguished Professor of Science and director of the Laboratory of Informatics and Data Mining.

Watson is being fed all the regulations from New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), formatted in a way so that Watson can identify the answers to specific questions. Some questions include “What do I do if my building loses heat? Can I have a pet? What are the income restrictions for public housing?”

The documents analyzed by Watson and the students will eventually help lawyers working with underserved communities to obtain legal information more quickly and accurately than ever before, said Burke. She noted that even plainly written websites that seek to translate regulations into accessible language presume that the reader knows how to phrase the question appropriately—or is even looking in the right place. Watson can better understand what people mean to ask in their everyday language.

“What we’re doing will have real applications for the community in which we’re living by making it easier to navigate critical information,” said Burke.

Burke, who is a graduate of both Fordham Law and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (she holds a master’s in computer sciences) already knows the cross disciplinary approach firsthand. She said that lawyers, who are held to a high standard of language, must understand how technology is processing that language.

“Pre-law students are getting exposure to technology that will inevitably accompany them in their careers,” she said. “We’re producing more relevant future lawyers and, at the same time, our computer scientists will better understand developments in the law.”

The chance for the students to work with Watson before it becomes available to the general public represents an extraordinary opportunity, said Hsu. A small group from both classes convenes each week in the informatics and data mining lab to fine-tune the questions, as well as the answer documents being entered into Watson. Some students, like senior Dominick Marinucci, have had experience with law through internships, while others, like sophomore Ian Granger, not so much.

“I have no legal experience so this project is teaching me how to dig into another field that I know nothing about,” said Granger.

Then there is the process itself, which includes predicting questions that lawyers may ask about NYCHA.

“We try to figure out what knowledge is out there; then we figure out how do we best deliver it to Watson,” said junior James Apfe.

“We also have to keep in mind the impact that this project will have on the lives of people,” added senior Amell Peralta.

The students are also aware they are working on the early stages of cognitive computing and of all the concerns that surround it and Artificial Intelligence.

“The technology itself won’t harm us and can never surpass human beings because we created it,” said graduate student Xiaojie Lan. “But the terrible thing is people behind the technology may use it in the wrong way.”

It was a concern shared by Granger.

“Watson will become smarter than us and while that does scare me a bit, I think that there’s a potential for new learning and new concepts.”

Hsu was more holistic in his view.

“There are three directions of scientific discovery: one is the science of the physical universe—like physics and chemistry. The second is the science of the living systems—such as biology and neuroscience. Then the third is the science of information knowledge.

“That’s what this work is about: from data, to information, to knowledge, to wisdom, and then to enlightenment.”

However, if the computer and information science field focuses too narrowly on producing the next best gadget rather than improving technology already in use, the cost could be our safety and wellbeing, cautioned Marios Polycarpou, PhD at Fordham’s 2015 Clavius Distinguished Lecture.

In an April 17 talk on “Intelligent Big-Data Monitoring of Critical Infrastructure Systems,” Polycarpou stressed preempting catastrophic technological failure by focusing on making our smart devices smarter.

This is especially important for technology that underlies our critical infrastructure systems (CIS)—such as power and energy systems, telecommunication networks, transportation systems, and water networks.

“These systems are critical for everyday life and well-being, and people expect them to always be available. But the problem is that they do fail. And when they fail, the consequences are tremendous,” said Polycarpou, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and the director of the KIOS Research Center for Intelligent Systems and Networks at the University of Cyprus.

To prevent natural disasters, equipment failures, or malicious attacks leading to catastrophe, he said, “we need to design smarter infrastructure networks. This means designing smarter software to handle any faulty hardware.”

Smart technology is the next logical step following the “sensor revolution” of the 2000s, Polycarpou said. The introduction of sensors gave technological devices physical capabilities akin to the traditional human senses—balance, pressure, and temperature as well as sight, hearing, smell, and touch.

Now that these gadgets can sense their environments, they need the ability to process the information they gather and make decisions in response—which is the essence of smart technology.

“These devices have sensors that provide information and a brain that processes that information,” Polycarpou said. “They’re not just passive devices that make tasks easier for us, but have intelligent software to … make decisions.”

The growth in global population (Polycarpou cited that in 2000 there were 18 megacities around the world, whereas there will be an estimated 30 megacities by 2020 and 60 by 2050) makes CIS intelligence even more important, as most infrastructure networks are intertwined.

“If there’s an earthquake and everyone tries to use their phones, the communication system could break down,” he said. “There’s a lot of interdependence. When something goes wrong, it can propagate through the other infrastructures.”

The annual Clavius lecture and the Clavius Distinguished Professorship of Science, which is held by D. Frank Hsu, PhD, honors 16th-century mathematician Christopher Clavius, SJ, who helped develop the Gregorian calendar and was an early advocate of Galileo’s heliocentric model of the universe.

Frank Hsu, Ph.D., the Clavius Distinguished Professor of Science, has received a prestigious IBM Faculty Award, a distinction that this year was bestowed upon just 180 individuals worldwide.

The IBM Faculty Award is an annual initiative that fosters collaboration between university professors and researchers and IBM research, development, and service organizations.

Hsu, who also directs the Fordham Laboratory for Informatics and Data Mining, received an award in the field of cyber security.

The award comes with a grant intended to promote curriculum innovation and educational computer programs, encourage the computer science industry to adopt emerging technologies, and create opportunities to attract exceptional technical and business talent.

“Fordham University has established itself as a leader in creating a cyber security ecosystem that fosters the relationship among government agencies, academia, and industry,” said Marisa Viveros, IBM’s vice president for cyber security innovation. “We are excited to work with Dr. Hsu in scaling such a partnership and bring innovation into academic programs.”

Nearly three years ago, a doctor from St. Barnabas Hospital came to the Department of Computer and Information Science at Fordham for help with a medical research question.

David Dayya, D.O., M.P.H., was curious about data mining, a set of techniques for plucking valuable information from the torrent of data routinely generated by computers everywhere. He had found no reports of anyone applying these tools to the causes of disease and disability.

Dr. Dayya joined forces with Frank Hsu, Ph.D., Clavius Distinguished Professor of Science, in launching an interdisciplinary study group that today is producing fresh insight into a provocative public health issue: the potential links between lead and mercury pollution and autism.

It was a natural focus because of the nationwide spike in reported autism cases, and also because of the large data sets created by the federal government and other entities to study industrial pollution throughout the country, Dr. Dayya said. Making sense of that data, however, required tools that go beyond traditional methods of data-crunching to produce connections and comparisons that bring a new level of understanding.

“There is a big difference between data and information, and knowledge and wisdom,” said Hsu, an expert in the burgeoning fields of informatics and bioinformatics.

The group members, concerned about the nationwide shortage of physician-scientists, are also trying to cultivate more opportunities for medical residents to learn about informatics and statistics, and build the basic skills required for careers in research. Informatics has been applied to all sorts of tricky topics—including drug design and consumer behavior—that include diverse variables and messy data sets that can be hard to link.

For the study group’s project, the initial choice of variables was straightforward—lead and mercury are abundant in the environment, they can affect the nervous system, and autism is a nervous system disorder, in which communication and social skills are impaired.

It’s anything but simple, however, to conduct a broad study of the relationship between autism cases and mercury and lead pollution around the nation. In many states, lead and mercury are measured locally, while autism cases are only counted statewide and are often underreported, Dr. Dayya said. Some states have many pollution monitoring sites while others have few, or none.

Also, lead and mercury are diffuse in the environment. In one database, mercury and lead are measured in air particles; another shows mercury concentrations in rainwater and soil.

In light of the imperfections in the data, the study group is proceeding cautiously. “We’re progressing in a more exploratory type of analysis,” Dr. Dayya said.

The group also includes David Yens, Ph.D., an associate professor at the New York College of Osteopathic Medicine, part of the New York Institute of Technology, in Old Westbury, N.Y.; Yanjun Li, Ph.D., an assistant professor in Fordham’s Department of Computer and Information Science; and Christina Schweikert, Ph.D., a visiting assistant professor in the department.

Meeting monthly at the Rose Hill campus, they produced research that Schweikert presented in June at the Ninth IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Bioengineering, held in Taichung, Taiwan. The study was published in June in the proceedings of the conference.

The team used a data mining method in which variables are given ranks and scores to convert them into a common format, making them easier to compare.

They examined data collected in numerous states between 2000 and 2006, and found an association between autism prevalence and the combination of lead and mercury. They also looked for links between pollution readings and prevalence of autism in subsequent years, and found only one: mercury levels in water were associated with autism prevalence approximately four years later, Dr. Dayya said.

This finding could suggest that exposures to mercury during pregnancy are being reflected in later diagnoses of autism, especially since the condition is typically diagnosed around age 3. But the group needs to study this relationship further using data from more U.S. states to see if it holds up, he said.

The results comport with other research that shows environmental pollution could be related to autism. But the group’s study also acknowledges that the topic goes much deeper—for instance, it notes that some people’s genetic makeup may make them more likely to develop autism after being exposed to environmental toxins.

For now, the group will pursue new data to add to its mix and keep trying novel approaches to understand it better.

“The goal is to use multiple techniques to apply to autism, lead and mercury data to get different perspectives and learn something new about the data,” Schweikert said.

The project is one sign of a growing educational emphasis in this area.

Fordham recently established an undergraduate minor in Bioinformatics, as well as an advanced graduate certificate in Biomedical Informatics jointly administered by the Biological Sciences and Computer and Information Science departments.

A medical resident at St. Barnabas who took part in the study, Martin Torrents, used the experience to gain a certificate in biomedical informatics and research that was just launched by the New York College of Osteopathic Medicine Educational Consortium through the St. Barnabas Hospital affiliate.

Dr. Dayya invites medical residents from St. Barnabas and elsewhere to participate in the group’s sessions; he and Hsu are also seeking funds for a fellowship program to train more medical residents in statistics and informatics.

The dearth of doctors who are also trained researchers is a nationwide problem that has drawn the attention of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Dayya said. “There’s a nationwide call for more physicians in research, more clinical scientists, and there is a grave shortage of them,” said Dr. Dayya, who has a background in biostatistics. “They’ve been described as the bridge between basic science and the patient, i.e. the facilitators of translation research.”

“We don’t have a lot of physicians trained to be able to do this kind of research that we’re talking about, and this is our humble effort to help advance that national goal,” he said. “The relationship between us has been so productive that we are anticipating regular publications in this area.”