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National Science Foundation has awarded Dr. Xingya Liu (PI), Assistant Professor from the Department of Computer Science, part of College of Arts and Sciences

National Science Foundation has awarded Dr. Xingya Liu (PI), Assistant Professor from the Department of Computer Science, part of College of Arts and Science, a $180,000.00 grant from Communications, Circuits, and Sensing-Systems (CCSS) program under the division of Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems (ECCS), award #: 2025307, for the proposal titled Exploiting Upper Layer Spectrum Sensing and Directionality to Access the Hidden Available Spectrum for a period of three years starting in Aug. 2020.

This project will have a significant impact on enhancing radio spectrum access. The spectrum resource waste led by conventional spectrum sensing and access techniques cannot be solved by physical-layer alone. Therefore, upper layer networking techniques are incorporated to discover and access additional available spectrum hidden from physical layer detection. 

This research will have significant impacts on research in emerging technologies with dynamic spectrum access, such as vehicular networks, mobile health and opportunistic interconnections of heterogeneous wireless networks. The proposed designs can also be applied to Internet-of-Things (IoT) with IoT devices efficiently accessing the wide spectrum. 

This project provides excellent opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students. The scope of the project is well suited for forming the basis of M.S. theses. Carefully designed demonstrations can help students understand complex concepts of communications and networking, assisting effective classroom teaching and inductive learning. Topics on wireless networking with ample inputs from this project will be incorporated into the undergraduate- and graduate-level courses. 

Dr. Jing Zhang, Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science, has received funding from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA)

Collaborated with Texas A&M AgriLife Research Center at Beaumont, Dr. Jing Zhang, Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science, has received funding from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), a federal agency within the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), for a three-year project titled "A Digital Rice Selection System that Integrates UAV Imaging, Machine Learning, and Multi-Trait Decision-Making" (USDA-NIFA Award #2022-67021-36584, $650,000, Lead PI: Dr. Yubin Yang, Texas A&M AgriLife Research Center at Beaumont. º£½ÇÉçÇø receives $160,000 as the subawardee, Lamar's PI: Dr. Jing Zhang).

The primary goal of the project is to transform traditional rice crop research toward a digital- and technology-centered research paradigm. The project will develop advanced machine learning algorithms to extract key rice phenological, morphological, and architectural traits from UAV imagery during critical rice growth stages, create multi-trait-based machine learning models for final aboveground biomass and rice grain yield estimation, and build a multi-criteria decision-making system for best-performing rice genotype selection.  

Dr. Zhang and his research team at º£½ÇÉçÇø will help with the development of machine learning algorithms for crop feature extraction from UAV images acquired at different crop stages, the integration of multi-dimensional and multi-temporal traits, and the implementation of the digital rice selection system.  

Dr. Zhang has also been awarded a patent titled “Systems and Methods for Extracting Prognostic Image Features” (Invertors: Dr. Maciej Mazurowski, Duke University; Dr. Lars Johannes Grimm, Duke University; Dr. Jing Zhang, º£½ÇÉçÇø). This patent is useful for determining lesion severity and disease prognosis for breast cancer, which is a leading cancer diagnosis among women with more than 230,000 new cases a year in the United States. The patented systems and methods can extract and analyze image features that are correlated with breast cancer molecular subtypes and prognosis and, therefore, provide clinical benefit for breast cancer by identifying cancer subtypes without formal genetic analysis.

Press Release Video Games

Cardinals Esports places third in FORTNITE season for central conference in Cstar league. The FORTNITE team is comprised of Gabe Ruff and Kenny Ho (left to right in the attached photo), two Freshmen Computer Science Majors. Gabe Ruff and Kenny Ho met in Computer Science Cardinal Community, where they both said their favorite thing to do was play FORTNITE.

The dynamic duo secured their top three finish in the final match of the season in Jan. 2020. Kenny Ho had a standout performance in this tournament, getting second greatest number of winnings with 14. When asked about the finish Kenny said, “it was easy”, clearly confident in his skills. “After we fluked the first two rounds and I got heated. But I knew I had to stop being nervous. I had to play well, because if we lost I was only going to cash out $50. I didn’t want to cash out 50 bucks. After that we won the third round and we got a lot of points in the final round.”

Gabe Ruff also played well, putting up solid numbers and making the strong finish possible. For their third place finish each player won $1,250 in scholarship money.  With their third place finish they qualify for the FORTNITE season playoffs, where they will face off against the top eight teams from every conference and have a chance to be recognized as best in the nation. 

Cardinals Esports and the Department of Computer Science are proud of what these students have accomplished and looking forward to what is to come.

2019 High School Programming Contest

Our 2019 High School Programming Contest was held in Jan. 2019. There were about 76 high school students and teachers from five high schools attending the event (Little Cypress Mauriceville High School, Friendswood High School, Sabine Pass High School, Liberty High School and Seven Lakes High School), as well as Lamar faculty, staff and student volunteers at the contest. The host was Dr. Jane Liu, University Professor from the Department of Computer Science.

The programming contest was in the morning, followed by a lunch buffet in the Dining Hall, and a campus tour as well as the award ceremony in the afternoon.

Check the following link for details: 

Dark Web by 12News (Fox)

Dr. Stefan Andrei, Chair of Computer Science, was interviewed by local news station, 12News. Please watch the video below to see Dr. Andrei discuss the world of the dark web.

21-year-old Alexander Barter appeared in Federal Court in Beaumont on Halloween. Authorizes said he used the "dark web" to search for a child to defile. His gruesome plan was stopped by undercover agents with the Texas Department of Public Safety. These horrifying allegations had our newsroom asking, what is the dark web and how is it being used?

National Science Foundation has awarded º£½ÇÉçÇø a $516,031.00 grant

It is our great pleasure to announce that the National Science Foundation has awarded º£½ÇÉçÇø a $516,031.00 grant under the provisions of its Major Research Instrumentation Program for the acquisition of a hybrid CPU/GPU high-performance computing cluster (HPCC). Dr. Jing Zhang (PI), Dr. Sujing Wang (co-PI), and Mr. Frank Qingguo Sun (Senior Personnel) from our department (Computer Science, part of College of Arts and Sciences) and Dr. Yueqing Li (co-PI, Department of Industrial Engineering) as well as Dr. Tao Wei (co-PI, Department of Chemical Engineering – Dr. Wei resigned at the end of Summer 2017 and is no longer with Lamar) were awarded by National Science Foundation, award #: 1726500, for the proposal titled MRI: Acquisition of a Hybrid CPU/GPU High Performance Computing Cluster for Research and Education at º£½ÇÉçÇø for a period of three years starting on October 1, 2017.

With the exponential growth in data acquisition and data generation in multiple research areas, traditional computer servers/workstations are no longer adequate to handle the size and complexity of current data sets. The hybrid CPU/GPU HPCC has become an indispensable tool for a variety of leading-edge research and educational activities.

This three-year grant supports the purchase of a state-of-the-art HPCC with hybrid CPU/GPU processors, which will make it possible to deploy the best suited computing nodes to perform traditional CPU-based, GPU-based, and hybrid CPU/GPU-based data-intensive computing tasks at LU. The instrument will significantly increase heterogeneous computing capability and greatly facilitate a variety of research projects in the areas of imaging genomics, deep learning, big data, computational neuroscience, molecular physics, advanced materials research, scientific optimization, water and air quality analysis, transportation systems, electronic structure calculations, nucleic acid biomarker discovery and epigenetics and many more. The instrument is also an essential educational tool with the potential to foster interest among faculty in the development of new courses that will integrate state-of-the-art research into undergraduate and graduate curricula. All trained students will have access to the excellent computing environment that will broaden their knowledge and research experiences. The hands-on experience will further provide students with unique training that will increase their competitiveness in relation to their future careers. Local high school students will have an opportunity to visit LU's Data Center and experience the power of the HPCC, which will be an effective means for showcasing the modern technology available to future researchers and engineers.

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Computer Science Department announces project to create the Avatar-based Virtual Campus of º£½ÇÉçÇø

The Department of Computer Science is excited to announce a student project to create the Avatar-based Virtual Campus of º£½ÇÉçÇø. This project is supported by the Department of Computer Science and the Center for Innovation and Commercialization Entrepreneurship. This platform provides a virtual look for Lamar Campus with buildings of interest. Read More