Dr. James Whittaker, computer science
professor, received a $50,000 grant
from Northrop
Grumman’s Airborne Ground Surveillance
and Battle Management Systems Division
to create UNIX-based security auditing
tools for the company.
Director of the
university’s Center
for Information Assurance, Whittaker is
the author of How to Break Software: A
Practical Guide to Testing and How to Break
Software Security: Effective Techniques
for Security, coauthored by Herbert H.
Thompson ’99 M.S., ’01 Ph.D.
Dr. Samuel Kozaitis, electrical and
computer engineering professor,
has received
a $50,000 grant from the University of Central Florida
for work on a multispectral sensor.
He will apply advanced algorithms to enhance
a sensor that can assist firefighters
in locating people in smoke-filled buildings
and help to detect chemical spills.
Kozaitis, with DRS Optronics, Inc., will focus
on sensor imagery improvements. Medical and
commercial applications include
night vision security applications
and “hot spot” detection
of humans and vehicles where vision
is obscured.
Dr. Richard Ford, computer science
research professor, earned a $76,000
grant
from Cisco System’s Critical Infrastructure
Assurance Group to research the spread
of computer worms in a “realistic” computing
environment. “It is difficult to
teach about computer virus epidemiology
as there are no tools available for classroom
use. This project aims to rectify this
by providing a simple tool that teachers
can use to show how computer viruses spread
within a network,” said Ford. With
the support of graduate students, Ford
hopes to develop and release v1.0 of
the tool by early March 2005.
Two faculty members earned a two-year
wind research grant from the Florida
Sea Grant Program. The grant supports work on a joint
project with the University
of Florida. Dr. Jean-Paul Pinelli,
civil engineering
associate professor, and Dr.
Chelakara Subramanian, mechanical
and aerospace engineering associate
professor,
will evaluate the vulnerability
of man-made coastal structures
to hurricane
wind damage.
The team also will determine
how retrofits and new construction
methods can reduce
risk, and will conduct a cost-benefit
analysis of these mitigation
measures.
A $100,000 National Science Foundation
grant funds a nanotechnology
project to develop a molecular photosensor. The photosensor
will be based on compounds,
such as Vitamin A, found in mammalian
retinae. Dr. Joel
Olson and Dr. Nasri Nesnas,
chemistry assistant professors, earned
the grant to develop
the technology, which can be
useful in the fabrication of miniscule cameras—the
size of a grain of sand—requiring
very little power. Such a camera
could be put to medical, military
and national
security uses. Also collaborating
on this multidisciplinary project
are Dr. James Mantovani, physics,
and Dr. Syed Murshid, electrical
engineering.
Olson
and Nesnas received an additional
$25,000
grant from the Florida Solar
Energy Center to expand this
work.
Dr. Junda Lin, biological sciences
associate professor, earned a $50,000
grant from Poseidon Ocean Sciences to develop
technology for culturing spiny lobsters and other
marine tropical species. “The better
able we are to cultivate and harvest marine
life, the less damage there will be to
aquatic environments,” said Lin. “Harvesters
in the wild can cause a great deal of damage
to the fragile tropical reefs where spiny
lobsters and other marine animals live.” Lin
has previously received similar
grants for researching the
care and feeding
of rare and delicate tropical
shrimp.
Dr. Jonathan Whitlow, chemical engineering
associate professor, received
a grant of nearly $50,000 from NASA to develop computer
models that can lead to
producing propellants from the lunar
regolith, or rock mantle.
He will collaborate with
NASA Kennedy Space Center, NASA Johnson Space Center, and
the Colorado School of
Mines.
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