Conferences and Presentations – School of Computing

�鶹��ý�� Organized the 2025 IEEE International Workshop on Intelligent Systems and Interdisciplinary Applications

wiesea — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 17:17:09 +0000

On October 10, 2025, �鶹��ý�� organized the , bringing together scientists, engineers, educators, practitioners, and industry experts to explore the cutting-edge advancements in intelligent systems and their applications across multiple domains. This workshop aims to foster a collaborative platform where participants can exchange knowledge, discuss emerging challenges, and identify innovative solutions that bridge disciplinary boundaries. By integrating insights from science, engineering, and domain-specific expertise, the workshop facilitates holistic approaches and solutions for designing, deploying, and optimizing intelligent systems for real-world interdisciplinary impact.

ISIA 2025 features international invited talks, panel sessions, IEEE student poster competitions, networking with industry leaders, and IEEE student branch activities and celebrations. This full-day workshop engaged about 120 participants, including IEEE Life Fellows, IEEE Fellows, IEEE staff, IEEE professional members, IEEE student members, �鶹��ý�� faculty and students, �鶹��ý�� alumni, industry professionals, and faculty and students from neighboring institutions.

After a brief program overview by the organizing chair Dr. Weitian Wang, ISIA 2025 commenced with keynote welcome remarks from Dr. Lora Billings, Dean of the College of Science and Mathematics. Dr. Billings extended a warm welcome to all guests and participants and highlighted �鶹��ý�� robotics, AI, and intelligent systems research and education in recent years. Followed by speeches from IEEE leaders, including IEEE Region 1 Director Bala Prasanna, IEEE North Jersey Section Chair Dr. Emad Farag, and IEEE AP-S Global CAC Chair Dr. Ajay Poddar. Director Prasanna commended �鶹��ý��’s strong engagement, leadership, and contributions to IEEE.

Keynote welcome remarks from Dean Billings

The morning continued with the celebration of the inauguration of IEEE �鶹��ý�� AP-S Student Branch Chapter, led by Chair Stephania Ivanov and Vice Chair Alex Chornyak, marking a significant milestone in student engagement and professional development at �鶹��ý��. It also highlights �鶹��ý�� students’ growing leadership and involvement in the IEEE community.

Student organization celebration and speech by IEEE leaders

Following the inauguration, the workshop featured international invited talks from leading experts in intelligent systems and interdisciplinary applications, including Dr. Branislav Notaros, Dr. CJ Reddy, Dr. Naresh Chand, The Honorable Judge Sohail Mohammed, and Dr. Ulrich Rohde. The “Learning Through Engagement” panel session brought together an impressive lineup of international experts and IEEE leaders, who shared their experiences and insights into how to foster student engagement, promote professional development, and advance interdisciplinary collaboration with participants.

Invited speakers and experts across universities and industries

During the afternoon session, attendees took part in a networking lunch that brought together participants from academia, industry, government, and non-profit organizations to foster future research collaborations and support student career development opportunities. The session also featured a student poster competition showcasing innovative research projects led by �鶹��ý��’s undergraduate and graduate students. The posters covered a broad range of interdisciplinary topics, including artificial intelligence, robotics, human-robot interaction, data science, cybersecurity, environmental science, machine learning, and intelligent systems applications. Three Best Student Poster Awards were selected by a panel of judges from various disciplines, based on the posters’ visual design and organization, content novelty, content quality, and clarity of presentation.

Student poster competition and networking lunch

Best student poster awards

The 2025 IEEE International Workshop on Intelligent Systems and Interdisciplinary Applications successfully fostered meaningful exchanges among students, faculty, and industry professionals by highlighting innovative research, promoting interdisciplinary collaboration, and recognizing student achievements. Led by �鶹��ý�� College of Science And Mathematics and the School of Computing, this workshop was co-supported by the IEEE North Jersey Section, IEEE AP-S CAC, SIGHT, COPE, IEEE NJS AP/MTT Jt. Chapter, �鶹��ý�� AI Hub, National Science Foundation, IEEE NJS SMC Chapter, IEEE �鶹��ý�� AP-S Student Branch Chapter, and IEEE �鶹��ý�� Student Branch.

Research Team Win Best Paper at IEMTRONICS 2025

wiesea — Tue, 06 May 2025 14:15:20 +0000

The research group won a best paper award at the (Imperial College, London), based on Reviewer’s Choice. The project was titled and was in the Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning category. The paper presentation was conducted in the hybrid mode at this conference.

Research Team Win Best Paper at IEEE UEMCON 2024

wiesea — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 15:15:26 +0000

The 2024 IEEE 15th Annual took place at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, New York. Dr. Wang’s research team were awarded best paper in the Whole Conference, Full Research Papers, Student 1st Authors category. The project was titled .

Faculty and Student Research Group Win Best Paper at IEEE IISA 2024 Conference

wiesea — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 19:41:52 +0000

The project looks at the critical challenge of early detection of tuberculosis (TB). This research presents a novel multimodal approach utilizing audiovisual information from cough recordings to detect TB. We move beyond traditional image-based methods (such as sputum smear microscopy and chest X-rays) and examine the feasibility of leveraging cough recordings to differentiate TB cases. Two main audio processing techniques, namely Mel-Spectrograms and Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCCs), are employed for feature encoding of audio recording in deep learning models for TB classification. Our proposed methods leverage a large challenge dataset comprising clinical data from over 1,105 participants and more than 502,252 cough recordings. Notably, a simple 1D Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) trained on MFCC features achieves an accuracy of 91%, surpassing the World Health Organization’s (WHO) requirements for TB screening tests. Our findings underscore the potential of MFCC features and 1D CNNs for accurate TB detection utilizing cough sound data. This approach adheres to the Occam’s Razor principle, which favors simpler models (such as 1D CNNs) when they yield comparable results. This research paves the way for further study in diverse populations and facilitates the development of accessible TB screening solutions, especially in resource-limited settings where only cough recordings are feasible, thereby emphasizing its notable real-world impacts.

The has become an international forum for researchers and professionals in all areas of Information, Intelligence, Systems and Applications. We invite submissions of papers presenting high-quality original research and developments for the conference tracks listed.

Faculty and Student Research Team Win Best Paper Award at IEEE Conference

wiesea — Tue, 04 May 2021 17:41:56 +0000

The paper, Mitigating Remote Code Execution Vulnerabilities: A Study on Tomcat and Android Security Updates, has been selected for the best paper award under the Mobile Communication track based on the reviewer’s choice in held in April 2021. The research team consists of:

Stephen Bier ’20, MS in Information Technology
Brian Fajardo ’18, BS in Information Technology, current MS in Cybersecurity
Obinna Ezeadum, ’19, BS in Information Technology, current MS in Cybersecurity
German Guzman, ’20, BS in Computer Science, current MS in Cybersecurity
Kazi Zakia Sultana, Assistant Professor
Vaibhav Anu, Assistant Professor.

Student & faculty awarded for COVID information research

wiesea — Mon, 03 May 2021 14:58:09 +0000

The research team consisting of Jorge Torres, Computer Science BS and MS major ’18 and ’21, Vaibhav Anu, Assistant Professor, and Aparna Varde, Associate Professor presented at the in April 2021. Their work was presented and awarded Best Paper in the Information Technology (Short Paper) Track.

The paper will be included in IEEE Proceedings when they are posted!

Student and Faculty Receive Best Paper Award at IEEE IEMTRONICS 2020

wiesea — Mon, 14 Sep 2020 14:38:34 +0000

The team consisted of Christopher Joseph Conti, a student in the Master’s portion of his combined BS/MS in computer science, and Drs. Aparna Varde and Weitian Wang. IEEE IEMTRONICS is the International IoT, Electronics and Mechatronics Conference, a multi-disciplinary venue. The paper will be published in full in the IEEE proceedings indexed on Xplore, DBLP and other sites.

View the certificates awarded to each author below:

Abstract

Robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) span the broad realm of mechatronics in general. Humans and robots can collaborate with each other to enhance various tasks, e.g. in the vehicle industry. Facets of AI such as commonsense knowledge can play a significant role here. In this paper, we propose an approach for human-robot collaboration such that it leverages commonsense knowledge to develop models for the simulation of assembly tasks in real-world applications. We consider modeling based on relevant attributes, e.g. weight and stability of parts. The proposed approach thereby entails human-robot interaction, mathematical modeling, both semantics and pragmatics in commonsense knowledge, as well as challenges specific to the application domain. We describe our approach, focusing on the mathematical modeling, and conduct our experimental evaluation using simulation tasks. Experimental results indicate that the proposed approach yields better outcomes than humans or robots working alone, which is in line with other such claims in the field of human-robot collaboration. This work sets the stage for real robot applications based on the results of our simulation tasks.

Student Presents Class Project at Conference

wiesea — Mon, 03 Dec 2018 16:22:15 +0000

Dalvin’s work was published as a part of the 21st ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, and is done alongside Dr. Zytko. After his presentation other researchers wanted to know when he was finishing his PhD. To their surprise, Dalvin is currently an undergrad!

Professor presents at WWW conference

wiesea — Tue, 09 Oct 2018 18:11:36 +0000

Dr. Varde, while presenting her research & performing other duties, had the pleasure of meeting Sir Tim Berners Lee, the highly reputed Turing Award winner & inventor of the World Wide Web. Dr. Varde served as a PC Member & Session Chair at WWW 2018 (Lyon, France, April 2018). Sir Tim Berners Lee himself was an attendee, workshop co-chair, and panelist on AI and the Web. She presented a paper on Mapping Ordinances and Tweets using Smart City Characteristics to Aid Opinion Mining in their Satellite Track, published as a full paper in the Companion Volume. It is authored by Manish Puri, Xu Du, Aparna Varde and Gerard de Melo.

WWW Conference dinner with Dr. Aparna Varde and Sir Tim
Berners Lee

The paper describes research in the Smart Cities area conducted by our graduate students Manish Puri (MS, Computer Science) and Xu Du (PhD, Environmental Management) along with Dr. Varde and Dr. Gerard de Melo (Assistant Professor, Computer Science, Rutgers University). The Web Conference, WWW, is the pinnacle venue globally for presenting research in the area of the World Wide Web.