Where in the World Is Seidenberg?

Within the past 2 months, Seidenberg has been all around the world. We’ve sent faculty members and even students to the far corners of the Earth to increase our global presence. So where have we been going and what are we doing there? And, more importantly, how can you get involved?Well, the first trip was exclusively for top members, meaning Jonathan Hill, the Associate Dean and Director of Special Programs and Projects here at Seidenberg. Dr. Hill attended conferences in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, as well as in Singapore. These conferences focused on STEM – Science,  Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics – a topic that the Seidenberg school emphasizes in the classroom and study environments. Attending these conferences allowed Dr. Hill to experience what kinds of STEM initiatives are occurring around the globe in academia and commercially.

PDP students at the airport in October on their way to Finland.

Soon after Dr. Hill’s return from KL and Singapore, six students set off for Helsinki, Finland, as part of Seidenberg’s annual participation in Product Development Project (PDP). This is a project we  collaborate on with our good friends at Aalto University’s Design Factory. It’s an 8-month long project that allows students involved to travel to Finland twice: once during Fall to meet their Aalto team mates and to kickstart the project, and once again in May for the final presentations of said project. It’s a great way for students to gain real world experience in product development, which can often be programming heavy. This year, the six students from Pace have been put onto two different PDP teams. One team (Julie Gauthier, Olga Bogomolova, and Daniel Rings) has been joined with 11 other team mates in Finland and they will be working on a project funded by one of Finland’s largest casino companies to create new types of gambling machines that enhance the culture (of gambling and Finland) rather than detract from it. The other team (Shane Kirk, Nicole Semple, and Anya Rosentreter) has also joined with 11 others to design a test space for a children’s hospital that will be used in the plans for a new hospital to be built in 2016.

The day after the students returned, Jonathan Hill, Professor Richard Kline, and Wilfredo Peña, Seidenberg’s Community Manager, left for Shanghai. They visited the Aalto Tongji Design Factory, a portion of Aalto DF that has been around since 2010, for a “meeting [that] allowed for partners of the Global Design Factory Network to come together and share ideas about their respective Design Factories,” says Peña. Our Helsinki-based friends Peter Tapio and Andy Clutterbuck also joined up with Hill, Kline, and Peña to participate in the International Design Factory Week of 2013. This multifaceted partnership has grown strong enough that Pace University has now become one of only 6 international universities to be an official part of the Design Factory. This means big things for Seidenberg! More info, once the details are sorted, will be available in due time!

Participants in the Design Factory International Week 2013 at Alto-Tongji

 

Timothy Clancy at Pace to Talk About Cyber Security Policy

Earlier this afternoon, Timothy Clancy of Arch Street LLC gave a presentation on Cyber Security at Pace. Cyber Security is one of Seidenberg’s 4 academic initiatives and an incredibly fruitful field for academics and careers. 

Clancy spoke of Cyber Security in terms of 5 paradigms under the umbrella of Critical Infrastructure Protection. These paradigms include Law Enforcement, Military, Intelligence, Diplomacy, and Economics with economics being the focal point of Clancy’s presentation.

Clancy described Cyber Security as a socio-technical issue rather than just a technology issue. The faults can lie in many aspects of a program, and breeches in security are surrounded by ambiguity. Everyone wants to know: who is organizing the attack, what are they attacking, from wherehow, and what are the consequences? And to answer those questions, Clancy prompts: ‘Who ya gonna call?’ The Ghostbusters won’t help in most cases, so who is available? DHS? DoD? CISCO? DOJ? Or are they (like CISCO, for example) the ones selling vulnerabilities in a box? These are the problems that engineers and policymakers are up to their necks in. In response to these issues, Clancy mentions Dan Geer’s statements (Dan Geer is a Computer Security and Risk Management specialist associated with MIT and CertCo) about problems engineers must tackle when programming, “Fast, Cheap, Reliable. Choose two,” and similarly for policymakers, “Freedom, Security, Convenience. Choose two.”

On a graph, the space between network complexity over time and security over time has grown exponentially since the mid 1980s. If this pattern continues (which has a high likelihood), Clancy states that Cyber Security will provide “jobs for life if [one is] willing to go into it,” and the most useful tools for tackling issues of governance, liability, and insurance against security attacks are research and education. Both research and education of Cyber Security are held at high importance here at Seidenberg.

Orange Healthcare Infographic Champions Telehealth

In a world where millions of people are connected to the web through various technologies, it makes sense to take advantage in a meaningful way.Telehealth is a promising industry that connects patients with healthcare professionals via the web, reducing the strain on doctor’s offices and hospitals, helping to treat illnesses during their early stages, and helping to streamline the healthcare process so that more patients can be seen and receive treatment in less time.

A new infographic by Orange Healthcare gives a colorful insight into telehealth and its successes over the last year. It includes information on how much telehealth has been implemented around the globe and how many patients benefited from it, as well as projecting future figures – such as how an estimated 1,800,000 patients will receive remote monitoring care in 2017.

Other details on the infographic include the notion of more technology being designed to monitor, collect, and communicate health information securely to health providers so they can act immediately. Finally, the improvement of life quality is touched upon, with Orange Healthcare stating that 168 million hospitalization days could be saved, as well as 158,000 years of life, with the implementation of telehealth on a greater scale around the globe.

Telehealth is one of Seidenberg’s four initiatives that form a crucial part of our research. Our research into telehealth includes exploring issues related to technology, the law, public policy, and business. Together, faculty and students work to advance the enormous potential telehealth has to change the field of healthcare.

Seidenberg’s Assistant Professor of Information Systems, Darren Hayes, Featured in E-Commerce Times Article

21 September 2013:

“RSA Warns Customers Off Suspected NSA-Tainted Crypto Tools”  

In the article linked to above, Seidenberg professor Darren Hayes speaks to the ECT News Network about complications between technologies and security protocols. The topic has been heavily circulated in the media and through academia since humanity’s pronounced dependance on technology and even more so since the recent events concerning the NSA, national security, and privacy of US Citizens. The specific technology discussed in the article is the Dual Elliptic Curve Deterministic Random Bit Generator (Dual_EC_DRBG).

The Dual_EC_DRBG is a PRNG [pseudorandom number generator] based on the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem, the idea being that finding the discrete logarithm of a random elliptic curve element with respect to a publicly known base point is not feasible. The bigger the elliptic curve, the more difficult it is to find that discrete log.

The problem is that there is a backdoor in the NIST SP800-90 Dual-EC-PRNG standard. This was first discovered by Microsoft researchers Dan Shumow and Niels Ferguson, who discussed their findings at a Crypto 2007 rump session.”

Hayes works alongside many projects in technological cryptology and security and these issues often present themselves as fruitful topics of debate across the globe.

Dual_EC_DRBG or Dual Elliptic Curve Deterministic Random Bit Generator

 

Computer Science Grads Take On High Starting Salaries

Good news for Seidenberg’s graduating Class of 2013 – a new salary survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) has revealed that Computer Science majors can expect a higher starting salary than last year’s graduating class. The increase is an impressive 3.1 percent, making the average starting salary $64,100.

According to the survey, the average salary for Class of 2013 graduates across all disciplines (Business, Communications, Computer Science, Education, Engineering, Humanities & Social Sciences and Math & Sciences) is $45,327, with Computer Science being the third highest paid after Business and Communications. So Computer Science majors going into graduate employment can expect to earn a whopping $20k above the average.
The prospect of receiving a higher starting salary applies to graduates who majored specifically in Computer Science. Other majors in the Computer Science discipline, such as Information Sciences & Systems, didn’t see an increase – but with an average starting salary of $55,200, it’s still a respectable figure well above the average for all disciplines.

Even though 2013 has been a golden year for Computer Science salaries, the different needs of the market mean that next year could be the winner for your major: between 2009 and 2010, the average starting salary for Information Sciences & Systems graduates leapt up by $3,000! So let’s keep working toward our degrees – Seidenberg students are in a great position for a good starting salary, no matter what.

First Week Back to School

We are officially into the Fall 2013 semester of class. This post is to recap all the things that are going on around NYC and Pace for you to enjoy before classes get serious.
First off, it’s Broadway Week for anyone interested in seeing some excellent performances. Broadway Week means all shows are doing a 2 for 1 ticket deal, but it only lasts until the end of the week! Seats are disappearing fast, so grab some before they’re gone!

From left to right, Dr. Richard Kline, Dr. Christelle Scharff, Kalevi Ekman, Dean Amar Gupta, Dr. Jonathan Hill, and professor Bryn Haffey all stand together, prepared for Fall 2013.

Quick note on classes that you may have been to that you’re already dreading. Our advice: drop them and substitute another. You have a few weeks to do this without penalty or before you miss too many hours of the class you may switch into. If you don’t like a professor or the syllabus makes the upcoming weeks seem dreary abort the mission. It’s not worth your time and effort to suffer through terrible classes and there are enough options available for you to switch without mussing your schedule. College is meant to be flexible and enjoyable. Some classes you will eventually have suffer through, but at least ease your pain by waiting until a decent professor comes along.

In Seidenberg news, the Finns have struck again. If you haven’t met our partners from Aalto University (including Peter Tapio who was here during the Summer Scholars Experience), they’ve been around for the last few days and leave this evening, unfortunately. They will be back eventually, so catch them while they are around. They are all a wonderful resource available to learn about project development in many fields.

The aforementioned workshop with Kalevi Ekman was a delightful afternoon. Photos from the event and a video that showcases Kalevi’s lessons on design will be available for viewing on Thursday. He himself is another one of our Finnish partners, also a head professor for the PDP (Product Development Project) program that Seidenberg takes part in. This program is an incredible opportunity for students and also gives students involved the chance to visit Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland.

Lastly, don’t forget that Computing Society meets on Wednesdays and there will be free pizza, just so ya’ know.

 

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