Titled “Enhancing Cybersecurity Education through AI-Integrated Curriculum Development for Faculty,” the year-long grant will fund the creation of 10 teaching modules that will be used by other institutions that teach cybersecurity.

Thaier Hayajneh, Ph.D., director of the Fordham Center for Cybersecurity, said that he and Gary Weiss, Ph.D., professor of computer and information science, will work with academics from other universities and private sector experts to create the coursework. They will hold workshops over the next year to solicit feedback and finish in the fall of 2025.

Threat Detection and Response

Hayajneh said a key focus of this new curriculum will be employing AI for rapid threat detection and response.

“What people in the industry are trying to do with AI is automate most of those things that we used to do manually,” Hayajneh said. 

“The readings, the observations, the analytics that we always have been doing—everything has AI being integrated into it,” he said.

“There is now AI-enhanced intrusion detection network security that’s used as a defense. But hackers also use AI to crack passwords and search for vulnerabilities in your system faster than before, so you have to test your systems with traditional attack capabilities but also with AI.”

Teaching the Teachers

The team’s recommended curriculum will be shared with the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Department of Defense for feedback, and the NSA will then make it available to eligible institutions through its digital library. 

“The curriculum is designed for faculty from other institutions, with the goal of bridging the gap between institutions that don’t have the expertise and the capability to develop AI-related cybersecurity courses,” Hayajneh said.

 “The ultimate goal is to teach the teachers.”

The grant is the fourth one of this type that the center has received. In 2017, it was awarded two grants worth $270,000 to develop a cybersecurity core curriculum and help build hands-on lab environments for cybersecurity training. In 2019, it received $300,000 to create a curriculum related to iOS and Android operating systems.

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.

But along the way, he made a deep foray into new technologies that could bring big changes to medicine as well as other aspects of daily life.

A New York City native, Ciuffo shadowed doctors in the city during freshman and sophomore year while also taking computer science courses. His major in computational neuroscience led him to Fordham’s Wireless Sensor Data Mining (WISDM) lab and the study of biometric data.

In the lab, students were exploring the use of smartphones and smartwatches for tracking a wide range of actions, from big movements like standing up and walking to small movements like noshing on potato chips. The devices’ sensors could record anyone’s “signature” way of moving with as much as 98 percent accuracy.

Ciuffo was fascinated. “Our brain-and-body connection is so unique, no matter what we’re doing,” he said.

At the suggestion of lab director Gary Weiss, Ph.D., Ciuffo decided to study something even smaller: the subtle wrist movements that we all make when writing. Other studies of people’s writing motions had relied on custom-made pens or keyboards, Ciuffo said, but he wanted to see what could be done with a wearable device.

With funding from a Fordham Undergraduate Research Grant, he had 24 people wear smartwatches containing gyroscopes and accelerometers while typing and writing by hand. “I didn’t know what to expect,” he said. “Even Gary Weiss was unsure if it was going to work.”

But it did work. The recorded patterns accurately identified the writer 94 to 98 percent of the time. Ciuffo and Weiss wrote up their findings and, in October, presented them at the 8th IEEE Ubiquitous Computing, Electronics and Mobile Communication Conference, held at Columbia University.

Ciuffo was one of the youngest people there. “I learned a lot of interesting things in the field of machine learning,” he said.

By then, however, he had refocused on becoming a doctor. He works in the emergency department at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, documenting patients’ medical histories, while preparing to apply to medical school.

He looks forward to working with patients one day, but will also keep his computer skills handy because of the burgeoning potential of biometric data. It could make passwords passé by providing a far more secure way of accessing your home or computer, for instance, and wearable devices could continuously monitor patients’ vital signs and activity over long periods, providing doctors with a wealth of useful information.

“I think there’s going to be an explosion of these wearable technologies that are just going to completely change the way doctors interact with their patients,” he said.

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.”

When you go to your doctor’s office for the test, everything comes back normal. But lurking somewhere inside, there is, in fact, an abnormality—it just did not occur during your office visit.

“You’re out of luck,” said Gary Weiss, Ph.D., an associate professor of computer and information sciences.

However, Weiss said, if the capability to monitor your heart were built into your smartphone, “you could be monitored over a longer period of time, as opposed to just a few minutes, which provides a lot more data.”

Mobile health and smart technology

With the advent of smart technology, that capability has become a reality. Originally designed to give doctors access to patients in remote, rural areas of developing countries, mobile health platforms have since proliferated. In just seven years, these devices have grown increasingly more complex. They can now accomplish tasks as simple as counting the number of steps you take and as sophisticated as checking glucose levels in your blood.

Weiss, who is the director of Fordham’s Wireless Sensor Data Mining (WISDM) Lab, has been making a foray into the field of mobile health by applying his research on activity-recognition to the newest member of the “smart” family, “smartwatches.” The WISDM lab’s latest work builds on the Actitracker, an application (“app”) for Android-based cell phones that the lab launched in 2013.

Using a built-in sensor called an accelerometer, the app detects and identifies the user’s physical activities, such as sitting, walking, jogging, standing, or climbing stairs. It then compiles the results so that the user knows how many minutes per day are spent sitting, standing, etc. When the app “learns” the nuances of its user’s movements using a built-in “self-training mode,” it yields results that are up to 98 percent accurate.

“The project was funded because of its potential to help combat obesity,” said Weiss, who received a National Science Foundation “Smart and Connected Health” grant for the project. “But it can really help with a lot of issues. For instance, tracking how someone walks could detect if they have any gait problems. Or we might be able to track depression if someone is spending the majority of the time lying down.”

Integrating Actitracker with smartwatches will make the app even more sophisticated, Weiss said, because it will be able to detect activities such as eating or drinking.

“A smartphone in your pocket is limited, because it really can only detect your leg motions, specifically the top of the legs. The smartwatch, though, will also be able to detect hand motions to identify activities like eating and drinking,” Weiss said.

For those who need to monitor their diets, having an app that can call attention to food intake can be invaluable. For instance, Weiss said, when the watch detects that you are eating, it could prompt you to add an entry to your food diary. Or, when it detects that you are drinking something, it might ask about the sugar content of your drink and advise accordingly.

Smartwatches arrive at the WISDM Lab

Sophomore Andrew Johnston is one of the students working on smartwatches in the WISDM lab.

“The accelerometer and gyroscope give feedback in terms of the number of steps you’re taking and there’s also a heartbeat sensor to take your pulse throughout the day,” said Johnston, a computer science and mathematics major.

“No one is doing activity-recognition with smartwatches right now, so we’re looking to corner the market there.”

Johnston is also doing research in biometrics, the study of distinctive, measureable human traits such as fingerprints or DNA. Johnston’s research focuses on using biometric markers for identity and security purposes—in other words, using things like voice or gait recognition in lieu of passwords.

“The problem with passwords is that they’re really weak,” Johnston said. “People who come up with them design them to be memorable. Which means that most of the time they’re also guessable.”

The process involves just a few steps, Johnston said. For instance, if you wanted to program a smartwatch to open a locked door using gait recognition, you would first demonstrate to the watch how you walk. Then the watch and the door would be programmed to associate your particular gait with the action “unlock door.” Thus, when you approach the door, the watch and door compare your walk with the profile on file, and if they match, the door unlocks.

“Moving to biometrics would make it more difficult for someone to get unauthorized access, because it’s a lot harder to guess how I walk than to guess something I use as my password,” Johnston said, adding that biometrics could ultimately be used for social media profiles and even electronic bank accounts.

Currently, the team is conducting experiments with the smartwatch and plans to have it integrated into the Actitracker app within six months. In the meantime, Weiss has submitted another grant proposal to the National Science Foundation to continue expanding their work with activity recognition—including integrating the app with social media so that users can broadcast their results.

“There are companies interested in this type of technology. Some startups have contacted us,” Weiss said. “All of this is now becoming technologically feasible because of the ubiquity of these powerful devices.”

1. Your smartphone is a sophisticated sensing device. Most people have no idea about how many sensors are incorporated into every iPhone and Android phone. Test yourself against the following list: audio sensor (microphone), image sensor (camera), acceleration sensor (tri-axial accelerometer), direction sensor (magnetic compass), rotation sensor (gyroscope), proximity sensor, light sensor, touch sensor, and multiple location sensors (e.g., GPS). And if you think, “at least my phone does not have a sense of smell,” think again. “Smell” sensors are being developed and, unlike your sniffer, they will also be able to measure carbon monoxide levels.

2. Your smartphone is a health/medical device that will become much more capable in the next few years. The ActiTracker service being developed in Fordham’s WISDM Lab will monitor your smartphone’s accelerometer to track your physical activities (walking, jogging, sitting, etc.), and provide the results via a Web-based interface. The “Instant Heart Rate” app that is currently available uses your phone’s camera to detect changes in the color of your fingertip (which must cover the lens) to determine your heart rate. Researchers are currently working to dramatically boost the magnification of your phone’s camera lens so that your phone can act as a microscope to analyze blood and skin samples. Researchers at MIT’s Mobile Experience Lab are even developing a sensor to attach to your clothes that will allow your smartphone to track your UV radiation exposure. At least for those with serious medical issues, the smartphone of the future will likely become the central component of your “Body LAN” (Local Area Network), as a variety of sensors are embedded in your clothes and accessories.

3. Your smartphone will become an even better digital assistant in the near future. Right now your smartphone can serve as a voice recorder, remind you of scheduled appointments, and dial your phone (“Call Mary”). For those with an iPhone, your assistant even has a name, “Siri,” and Google will almost certainly release their own assistant before year’s end. But in the future these digital assistants will do much more: walk into your hotel room and they will wirelessly adjust the temperature; enter a meeting and they will provide the names of all of the participants (from their mobile digital assistants); and walk down the street and they will tell you if your friends are near (this feature is available now).

4. Your smartphone can replace your credit cards. Right now, if you have certain models of Android phones, you can use Google Wallet to pay for purchases by tapping your phone against the store’s PayPass reader. Virtually all major credit cards are currently supported. In the future every smartphone will have this capability, and all stores will likely have the required readers. This method will likely be more secure than current payment methods.

5. Your smartphone supports augmented reality. Augmented reality involves the superimposition of graphics, audio and other information over a real-world environment that is displayed in real time. While everyone is waiting for Google Glasses, which will display relevant information onto specially designed glasses as you navigate the world (e.g., look at a restaurant and up pops a menu and coupon), for now most of us will have to make do with our smartphones and tablet computers. You can, of course, use Google Goggles to take a picture of an object to retrieve information about it, as well as use Star Chart for the iPhone, or Google Sky Map for Android, to learn about the stars (hold up your phone to the night sky and they superimpose information for you to view). Google Glasses will, quite literally, change our perception of reality.

Technological advancements will force us to change the way we think about smartphones and other mobile devices. Their increasing ability to sense and interact with the environment will make them more intelligent and autonomous, while their increasing ability to serve as assistants and share vast amounts of knowledge will make them an even more integral part of our lives.

– Gary M. Weiss, Ph.D.

A Rose Hill student who mines smart phones to unearth what they reveal about their owners recently brought his team’s research to Capitol Hill.

Jeffrey Lockhart, FCRH ‘13, presented his poster, “Smart Phone-Based Sensor Mining for Biometric Identification and Activity Recognition,” at the 16th annual Posters on the Hill (POH), held April 23 and 24 in Washington, D.C.

Sponsored by the Council on Undergraduate Research, the American Chemical Society, and education lobbyists from Washington Partners, the event featured 75 undergraduates from institutions around the country—a mere 8.8 percent of students who applied for the prestigious opportunity.

Lockhart presented his research during a poster session at the Rayburn House Office Building, which houses offices of U.S. Representatives and their staff.

“My sense is that our work was well-received,” Lockhart said. “Our fantastic results and National Science Foundation funding also turned heads.”

The project is an outgrowth of the Wireless Sensor Data Mining (WISDM) Project, led by Gary Weiss, Ph.D., assistant professor in the department of computer and information sciences. The group, which consists of more than a dozen researchers, collects sensor data from smart phones and other mobile devices that could provide useful knowledge.

“Smart phones have devices called accelerometers, which measure acceleration in three dimensions,” explained Lockhart, who is the team’s lead server side sensor mining architect. “By monitoring the accelerometer, we are able to capture patterns that describe the way a phone is moving in space. When that phone is in a person’s pocket, it moves with the person’s leg, and so the motion pattern is the pattern of the person’s activity.”

From these patterns, the group can tell whether an individual is walking or jogging, sitting or standing, or even male or female.

“Several professors [at POH]working in fields ranging from psychology to physical therapy were very interested in how the work could be applied to their studies,” Lockhart said.

The WISDM Project has been ongoing since May 2009 and has resulted in several publications and conferences presentations. Recently, the group received a $420,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, and in July 2010, Weiss received a $25,000 faculty research grant from Google.