CCEC Annual Report / 2013-2014 /

OVERVIEW

The College of Computing, Engineering and Construction had a strong and productive year. The number of students in continued to grow at an annual rate of approximately 7%, with computing programs leading the way with an increase of over 8%. All programs in the School of Computing and School of Engineering were continually accredited by ABET. Also, the department of Construction Management was accredited for six years by ACCE.

The College negotiated a formal agreement between Vistakon and UNF that will bring approximate $600,000 a year for the five years to researchers working on cutting-edge problems with Vistakon. The goal of the agreement is to build a strong, mutually beneficial and long-term relationship between Vistakon and UNF to develop talent and opportunity to hire future employees and to solve interesting problems in advanced manufacturing, IT and other areas of interest and importance to Vistakon.

The Faculty of the College continued to maintain a high level of productivity and engagement with our students, consistent with the College’s aspirationto be nationally known for its outstanding degree programs, scholarship and service and seeks to contribute significantly to the economic vitality of the Northeast Florida region, the State and the Nation.

NOTABLE AWARDS AND RECOGNITIONS

  • Dean Mark Tumeo was elected an American Society of Civil Engineering Fellow. The nationally recognized designation requires bearers to have had responsible charge for a minimum of 10 years of important industrial, business, construction, educational, editorial, research or engineering society activity, requiring the knowledge and background gained from engineering training and experience. Additionally, Fellows must be nominated by leadership within the ASCE.
  • Dr. Don Resio(Taylor Engineering Research Institute)was selected as a member of the National Research Council Committee on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Water Resources, Engineering, and Planning: Coastal Risk Reduction.
  • Dr. Don Resio(Taylor Engineering Research Institute) received the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) 2013 International Coastal Engineering.The International Coastal Engineering Award recognizes an individual who has made significant contributions to the advancement of coastal engineering in the form of engineering design, teaching, professional leadership, research, planning, or a combination thereof.

AWARDED FACULTY CONTRACTS & GRANTS

The Faculty of CCEC were awarded nearly $1.9 million in research grants and contracts in the 2013-2014 fiscal year. Some of the notable awards include

  • Dr. Adel El Safty(Civil Engineering) was awarded over $402,000 by the Florida Department of Transportation to test and evaluate polymeric material used for transportation infrastructures.
  • Dr. Thobias Sando (Civil Engineering) was awarded over $213,000 by the Florida Department of Transportation to establish a center for safe and accessible transportation for aging population.
  • Dr. James Fletcher (Mechanical Engineering) was awarded over $340,000 by the Florida Department of Transportation.
  • Dr. Sanjay Ahuja, Dr. Ching-Hua Chuan and Dr. Swapnoneel Roy (School of Computing) were awarded over $200,000 from Vistakon to explore cutting edge technologies in the areas of mobile computing and security.
  • Under the Direction of Dr. Don Resio, the Taylor Engineering Research Institute was awarded over $390,000 from various private and public sources, including the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Army, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
  • Dr. Patrick Kreidl (Electrical Engineering) received funding in the amount of $399,583 for his project entitled “Foundational Control-Theoretic Methods for an Open Cyber Runtime Environment” from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency-DARPA (via subcontract through Apogee Research, LLC).

STUDENT COMPETITIONS AND SCHOLARSHIPS

The success of CCEC students in regional, state national competitions is one of the best indicators that we are achieving our mission to provide our students with the highest quality education and professional experiences, to achieve excellence in our teaching, scholarship and service, and to continually enhance our programs through interactions with professional constituents in the community. A few highlights of this year’s successes include:

  • The Orbital Ospreys student club was among a select group chosen by NASA from universities across the country to fly their own research experiments aboard the agency’s G Force One aircraft this past June as part of NASA’s Reduced Gravity Education Flight Program, which takes student-designed projects and places them in a reduced-gravity environment generated by a state-of-the-art NASA aircraft.The team had the chance to run experiments from their Bioreactor for Zero Gravity prototype. The faculty advisor for the club is Dr. Daniel Cox(Mechanical Engineering).
  • The Osprey Racing student club ranked 81st out of 125 teams from national and international universities that competed in the 2014 round of the SAE’s annual race which takes place every May in Brooklyn, Michigan, The team ranked 24th in the business presentation category. APR energy is one of the main sponsors of the team. Dr. John Nuszkowski(Mechanical Engineering) is the student club faculty advisor.
  • The UNF’s National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) student club was placed second in the national NAHB Student Competition at the International Builders Show in Las Vegas. The students were tasked with designing a three-story, 80,000 sf core and shell medical office building in Orlando, FL. They were required to estimate the project and provide several additional pieces of information for submission. The club’s faculty Advisor is Mr. David Hacker (Construction Management).
  • The UNF Electrical Engineering studentsAlejandro Lepervanche, Elizabeth Voelkel, and Eric Rutherfordcompleted repairs on the Clay County Sheriff's Office (CCSO)Special WeaponsAnd Tactics (SWAT)robot. The projectwas completed under the guidance of Dr. Brian Kopp(Electrical Engineering), and the robot is once again helping the CCSO SWAT team perform their public safety and law enforcement duties.

JOURNAL PUBLICATIONS

Peer-reviewed journal publications remain one of the highest and most recognized metrics of scholarly activity in the academy. Over the last academic year, the Faculty of the College have produced numerous important scholarly works.

  • Ahuja, S. and Mani, S. (2013). “Empirical Performance Analysis of HPC Benchmarks Across Variations of Cloud Computing,” International Journal of Cloud Applications and Computing, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 13–26.
  • Ahuja, S. and Moore, B. (2013). “A Survey of Cloud Computing and Social Network,” Journal of Network and Communication Technologies, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 11-16.
  • Ahuja, S., Furman, T., Roslie, K., Wheeler, J. (2013). “Empirical Performance Assessment of Public Clouds Using System Level Benchmarks,” International Journal of Cloud Applications and Computing, Vol. 3, No. 4, pp. 81-91.
  • Bacopoulos, P., Lambert, J. D., Hertz, M., Montoya, L. and Smith, T. L. (2014). “Field and Model Study to Define Baseline Conditions of Beached Oil Tar Balls along Florida’s First Coast,” Journal of Marine Science and Engineering, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 160-170.
  • Brown, C. (2013). ”Using Solver to Estimate Aquifer Parameters for Confined Aquifers” Environmental and Engineering Geoscience, Vol. 19, No. 3, pp. 253-263.
  • Chuan, C. and Charapko, A. (2014). "Predicting Key Recognition Difficulty in Music Using Statistical Learning," Journal of Multimedia Engineering and Management, Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 56-72, 2014.
  • Chuan, C. and Chew, E. (2014). "The KUSC Classical Music Dataset for Audio Key Finding," Journal of Multimedia and Its Applications, Vol. 6, No. 4, pp. 1-18.
  • Crowley, R., Robeck, C., and Thieke, R. J. (2014).“Computer Modeling of Bed Material Shear Stresses in Piston-type Erosion Rate Testing Devices,” Journal of Hydraulic Engineering, Vol. 140, No. 1, pp. 24-34.
  • Elfayoumy, S and Warden, S. (2014). “Adaptive Cache Replacement: A Novel Approach,” International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, Vol. 5, No. 7, pp. 149-154.
  • Elfayoumy, S. and Thoppil, J. (2014). “A Survey of Unstructured Text Summarization Techniques,” International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, Vol. 5, No. 4, pp. 105-111.
  • Gordon, J. and Roggio, R. (2014). “A Comparison of Software Testing Using the Object-Oriented Paradigm and Traditional Testing,” Journal of Information Systems Applied Research, Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 39-84.
  • Hanke, M. H., Lambert, J. D., and Smith, K. J. (2014). “Utilization of a Multicriteria Least Cost Path Model in an Aquatic Environment,” International Journal of Geographical Information Science, Vol. 28, No. 8, pp. 1642-1657.
  • Li, Q., Crowley, R., Bloomquist, D., and Roque, R. (2014).“The Adhesive Strength Test (AST): a Newly Developed Test for Measuring Sealant Adhesive Strength Between Joints of Concrete Pavement,” Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering.
  • Malek, M. (2013). “A Green Era for the University of North Florida,” American International Journal of Contemporary Research, Vol. 3 No. 12, pp. 4-7.
  • Malek, M. and Mantev, C. (2014). “The Economic, Social and Environmental Benefits Derived From the Redevelopment of Brownfields,” Journal of Management Science and Engineering of the Canadian Research & Development Center of Science and Cultures, Vol. 8 No.1, pp. 1-5.
  • Reddivari, S., Rad,S., Bhowmik, T., Cain, N. and Niu, N. (2014). “Visual Requirements Analytics: AFramework and Case Study,” Requirements Engineering Journal, Vol. 19, No. 3, pp. 257-279.
  • Roggio, R., Gordon, J. and Comer, J. (2014). “Taxonomy of Common Software Testing Terminology: Framework for Key Software Engineering Testing Concepts,” Journal of Information Systems Applied Research, Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 4-12.
  • Soares, R. (2013). “Giving More to the Poor, a Successful Brazilian Housing Program Analysis,” International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology, Vol. 2, No. 10, pp. 2346-2354.
  • Soares, R., Prodanoff, Z., and Nicola, D. (2013). “RFID in the Construction of Single Family Dwellings,” International Journal of Engineering & Technology, Vol. 2, No. 12, pp. 693-699.
  • Tamura, H.,Bacopoulos,P., Wang, D., Hagen, S., Kubtko, E. (2014). “State Estimation of Tidal Hydrodynamics Using Ensemble Kalman Filter” Advances in Water Resources, Vol. 63, pp. 45-56.

PROMOTIONS AND AWARDS

In recognition of their work to date and the promise of continued excellence, the following professors awarded tenure and/or promotion this academic year.

  • Dr. Alexandra Schonning(Mechanical Engineering) was promoted to Professor, School of Engineering
  • Dr. Adel El Safty (Civil Engineering) was promoted to Professor, School of Engineering
  • Dr. Ching-Hua Chuan (School of Computing) was awarded the Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award
  • Dr. Alan Harris (Electrical Engineering) was awarded the Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award
  • Dr. Paul Eason (Mechanical Engineering) was awarded the Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award and the Outstanding International Leadership Award

TRANSFORMATIONAL LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES

The college of computing, Engineering and Construction is focused on providing our students the highest possible level of engagement, not only in their discipline, but in the region, state, nation and beyond. For this reason, the Faculty of the College offer a great number of Transformational Learning Opportunities to our students. For example:

  • Dr. Juan Aceros(Electrical Engineering) was awarded a TLO grant to lead engineering undergraduate students to design, fabricate and test adaptive toys to aid physical and cognitive therapists in the development of highly needed assistive technologies for children in the Jacksonville area. Students engaged in interdisciplinary learning activities as they connect and interact with DPT students through the process of device development.
  • Dr. Mag Malek(Construction Management) was awarded a TLO grant to engage students from the new track in Maritime Construction in the construction project of a replica of the Galveztown, an 18th century ship involved in the American Revolutionary War which played an important role in the history of Florida. The spent 5 weeks in Malaga, Spain, where the construction project took place. Students also attended concentrated courses at the University of Madrid.

OTHER NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENTS

  • Dr. Swapnoneel Roy(School of Computing) and Raghu Talluri’s paper titled “Cryptanalysis and Security Enhancement of Two Advanced Authentication Protocols” won the best paper award at the Second International Conference on Advanced Computing, Networking and Informatics (ICACNI-2014).
  • Dr. Bill Dally(Civil Engineering) was an invited keynote speaker at the 8th International Multipurpose Reef & Surf Science Symposium held in Rincon, Puerto Rico.
  • Dr. Sandeep Reddivari (School of Computing) was selected to become a member of IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMCS)Society’sTechnical Committee on Soft Computing.

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