Category: CSU Channel Islands

Christmas hike to Mount Boney in the Santa Monica Mountains

  • Far in back view of San Bernardino with snow
  • These berries ferment on the bush, and birds can get drunk on them
  • Approaching half way point: Danielson Monument
  • Danielson Monuments
  • Very rocky second half, slow going especially down
  • Top of Mount Boney from two thirds of the way up
  • Approaching the top
  • Reaching the top of Mount Boney, with view east
  • A view of Hidden Valley
  • A view of Newbury Park
  • From the top, a view of Dos Vientos, Oxnard plain, and Los Padres
  • Point Mugu radar station and Channel Islands in the back
  • View south, Catalina island in the back
  • Looking west toward the Channel Islands
  • Panoramic view of Satwiwa
  • CSU Channel Islands campus

Computer Science 5th Advisory Board Meeting

The fifth Computer Science Advisory board meeting took place on Monday December 9, 2019, chaired by Chris Meissner, from Meissner Filtration.

Some of the companies in attendance were the following: OmniUpdate (who gave the company profile), Booze Allen Hamilton, Naval Air Warfare Center Point Mugu, Haas Automation, Semtech, Procore Technologies, Ventura County ITSD, SAGE Publishing, File Your Taxes, Saalex Solutions, as well as other friends and supporters of the department.

Professor Scott Feister, in the picture above, gave a great talk about his research in high performance computing, and he combined deep knowledge of his field, with a plan of incorporating CI students, and fitting his work into the CI context. Scott Feister, together with Bahareh Abbasi, Reza Abdolee, Eric Kaltman and Vida Vakilian, are the five new faculty hires – which we were very proud to introduce to the board.

Chris Meissner, the chair of the board, spoke about companies supporting our capstones, and creating a synergy between R&D for IT business, work experience for CI student and research engagement for faculty.

Lance Merker and Kimberley Prieto presented the profile of Omni Update, where they spoke about a recent merger with Destiny solutions in Toronto, and the fact they have hired 25 to 30 CI alumni over the last years. They also spoke about the business of higher education, digital engagement for students, and continuing education platform.

Michael Soltys mentioned the current student numbers, and the constant growth of the department – about 10% every year. There is growth even as the times of slow enrollment are upon us — as Lance from OmniUpdate said, there is an expectation of 15% decline in college student numbers nationwide over the next two decades – and an opportunity for universities to offer classes for non-traditional students, e.g., veterans, who will be coming to take continuing education classes.

Michael Soltys presented recent initiatives in Cybersecurity, such at the October 11, 2019, HAAS/CI Cybersecurity conference and Cloud Computing, as well as a collaboration with the Navy whereby we offer modules in Python and in the future AI/Machine Learning.

AWS training at CI in the Spring and Summer 2020

Post updated with new dates on January 16, 2020

For questions please contact: jeff.ziskin@csuci.edu (805-437-2653). To register for an information session, or to register for the classes:

https://ext.csuci.edu/programs/professional-community-ed/aws

In the Spring 2020 I am going to teach two classes on Amazon Web Services (AWS), under the auspices of the AWS Academy, both open to the public:

  1. Cloud Foundations: online from March 9 to April 17:
  2. Cloud Architecting: online from June 1 to July 20:

We are following exactly the AWS curriculum, and students will be provided AWS Educate cloud accounts with credits for the duration of the classes, as well as vouchers for writing the corresponding certification exams.

Winter class at CI in Cloud Computing

Last week we sent a Qualtrics survey to our Computer Science and IT students to gage the demand for a Cloud Foundations class this winter session (December 21 to January 19).

This class would be taught online, as a COMP 490, using the resources we have at our disposal as part of the AWS Academy. The class would count as an elective, with cost-free AWS accounts for students, as well as vouchers to take the certification exam from AWS (for those who want to do so).

This class would be a good preparation especially for those students who will be looking for jobs, as “Cloud Computing” skills have ranked #1 on LinkedIn and other sites over the last 5 years!

Given the resounding interest in the class as shown on the Qualtrics survey:

we have decided to offer the class if there indeed is enough enrollment and the class is approved. The provisional web site for the class is here.

Marco Antonio Bustamante at Yardi

Marco Antonio Bustamante

Marco Antonio Bustamante (on LinkedIn) is a Software Development Engineer at Yardi Systems. He graduated with his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and minors in Mathematics and Security Systems Engineering in May 2019. Prior to graduation, Marco also completed an internship with FileYourTaxes.com through the Hank Lacayo Institute Internship Program, where he developed experience in Software Engineering. In the Summer of 2018, he also worked as a Student Assistant for the Engineering Innovation Summer Bridge Program at CSUCI, where he tutored and introduced foundational concepts of Computer Science to students in the Oxnard Union High School District. During his studies at CSUCI, he found interests in Mobile Development, Databases, Networks, and Web Applications. These interests heavily influenced his projects and ultimately lead him to gaining the skill set and knowledge to secure a position with Yardi.

Alfred Camposagrado at Northrop Grumman

Alfred Camposagrado is a Principal Embedded Software Engineer at Northrop Grumman. He received his Bachelor’s in Computer Science at CSUCI in 2014. He started his journey in Camarillo working as a Software Engineer for Crescendo Interactive shortly after graduation. He gained valuable experience by initially starting as a front-end developer and later promoted to a Full-Stack developer focusing on Java. His experience in Java landed him a job at Northrop Grumman. Located in Point Mugu, he supports the US Navy with various projects from software development to system integration tests. He also continues his education at CSUCI in the Masters of Computer Science Program (MSCS). http://linkedin.com/in/alfredcamposagrado

CI students’ research accepted at the KES2019 international conference in Budapest

KES 2019 conference in Budapest, Hungary

CI Computer Science students were successful in submitting three papers to KES 2019, the 23rd International Conference on Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Information & Engineering Systems, which this year is taking place in Budapest, Hungary, in September 2019. The papers are the following:

  • Approximating consistency in pairwise comparisons, co-authored by Chris Kuske, Konrad Kułakowski and Michael Soltys. Chris Kuske was a masters student in Computer Science at CI, and this paper is the result of his masters thesis [pdf], which was co-supervised by Prof. Konrad Kułakowski (AGH), who at the time was a Kościuszko Scholar in Computer Science at CI. Chris Kuske is a Software Lead at Teledyne Controls where he develops avionics software for commercial aircrafts. (This paper will be presented in the Invited Session IS18: Decision modeling with and without pairwise comparisons.)
  • SEAKER: A mobile digital forensics triage device, co-authored by Eric Gentry and Michael Soltys. Eric Gentry was a masters student in Computer Science at CI, and currently working at GBL Systems, and lecturing for Computer Science at CI. This paper is the result of a collaboration between Computer Science at CI and the SoCal High Technology Task Force. For more details on this collaboration please see here. (This paper will be presented in the Invited Session IS13: Cybercrime Investigation and Digital Forensics.)
  • Deploying Health Campaign Strategies to Defend Against Social Engineering Threats, co-authored by Noelle Abe and Michael Soltys. Noelle Abe is a senior student at CI, who just graduated this May with a degree in Computer Science. Noelle Abe was both a President’s Scholar at CI, and the vice-president of the Computer Science Girls Club. This paper was initiated by Noelle as part of her research as an exchange student in the UK in 2017. (This paper will be presented in the Invited Sessions IS24: Knowledge-based Learning and Education Support System: Design and Function.)

SEAKER

Raspberry Pi controller, the hardware for SEAKER

In the summer 2017, while I was teaching COMP 524 (Cybersecurity) at California State University Channel Islands, the students were introduced to a project based on an R&D from the SoCal High Technology Task Force (HTTF). The requirements and specifications asked for a device that could automate the search through vast amounts of data contained in portable devices (such as hard disks and thumb-drives), looking for pre-established patterns in file-names.

The students designed and prototyped a device the we christened SEAKER (Storage Evaluator and Knowledge Extractor Reader), based on a Raspberry Pi, with a custom designed version of Raspbian (the OS running on Raspberry Pis), and a bash shell script for cloning such devices. The first presentation of SEAKER took place on August 7, 2017, to an audience composed of CI faculty and students, as well as investigators from the SoCal HTTF.

As SEAKER was being developed, it was presented at various other venues, for example:

We have also published the research resulting from the SEAKER project:

  • As the masters thesis of Eric Gentry, April 2019 [pdf]
  • In the proceedings of the 2019 Future of Information and Communication Conference (FICC) [doi]
  • To appear in the proceedings of the 2019 23rd International Conference on Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Information & Engineering Systems (KES), track: Cybercrime Investigation and Digital Forensics

Computer Science 4th Advisory Board Meeting

On May 2, 2019, we held our fourth bi-annual Computer Science Advisory Board Meeting. The meeting started with lunch at the top (3rd) floor of Broome library, and continued with a two hour set of presentations in the Handel Evans room, also at Broome.

agenda

  • 12:00 PM – Lunch, 3rd Floor of Broome Library
  • 12:50 PM – Transition to J Handel Evans (Broome Library Rm 2533) 
  • 1:00 PM – Welcome, Agenda Overview & Introductions – Chris Meissner
  • 1:15 PM – Department Overview – Michael Soltys
    • Student numbers
    • Faculty updates and hires
  • 1:30 PM – Welcome from the Dean – Vandana Kohli  
  • 1:40 PM – Student Presentation
    • Robotics – student Steven Romp
    • Beast – students Noelle Abe and Devon Trammell Soltys
    • CS Club – students Julia Maliauka and Ori Weiss
    • CS Coding club – student Michael Petracca
    • CS Girls Club – students Noelle Abe and Maria Contreras
    • CS Cybersecurity Club – student Richie Zins
  • 2:10 PM – Member profile – The Trade Desk – Zak Stengel, SVP Engineering
  • 2:30 PM – Discussion – Chris Meissner and Michael Soltys
    • How do we become a world class department?
    • How do we become a hub of expertise?
    • Examples of where we already achieve partially these goals
    • But we need help from the board to get there
  • 3:00 PM  – Transition to Capstone Showcase, Sierra Hall

presentation slides

AdvisoryBoard-MichaelSoltys

SRomp

ThePasswordBeast

Clubs-2019

NETSEC

Gallery

Pictures from the Capstone Showcase.