Department of Computer Sciences

Ronaldo Menezes, Ph.D., Head

Degree Programs

Computer Science, B.S.
Computer Science, M.S.
Computer Science, Ph.D.
Software Engineering, B.S.
Software Engineering, M.S.

Undergraduate Minor Program

Computer Science Minor

Professors
Cem Kaner, J.D., Ph.D., software testing, computer law, software metrics, computer science education.

Ronaldo Menezes, Ph.D., coordination models and systems, multi-agent systems, swarm intelligence, bio-inspired computing.

Debasis Mitra, Ph.D., artificial intelligence, spatial and temporal reasoning.

Michael Workman, Ph.D., information security behaviors, technology and human factors in work-habit improvement.

Associate Professors
Rhoda Baggs, Ph.D., information security metrics, software engineering, multimedia in the classroom, reverse engineering of systems and legacy systems, requirements engineering, systems architectures.

Phil J. Bernhard, Ph.D., database systems.

Philip K. Chan, Ph.D., scalable adaptive methods, machine learning, data mining, parallel and distributed computing, intelligent systems.

Keith B. Gallagher, Ph.D., software evolution, empirical studies, program slicing, program comprehension, software visualization, software testing.

Michael C. King, Ph.D., biometrics, cyber-identity protection and privacy, machine learning, computer networks.

Eraldo Ribeiro, Ph.D., computer vision, image processing, pattern recognition.

William D. Shoaff, Ph.D., computer graphics, analysis of algorithms, mathematical software.

Marius C. Silaghi, Ph.D., cryptology, speech recognition, multi-party computation.

Ryan Stansifer, Ph.D., programming languages, compilers, internationalization.

Instructor
Marilyn Scott, M.S.

Adjunct Faculty
C. Amorde, M.S.; F. Cirillo, Ph.D.; M. Dausch, Ph.D.; T. Engler, M.S.; L. Grande, Ph.D.; B. Holbert, Ph.D.; K. Johnson, M.S.; S. Johnson, PhD.; T. Kasza, Ph.D.; J. Lanman, Ph.D.; W. Lomerson, Ph.D.; P. O’Meally, Ph.D.; B. Parenteau, Ph.D.; R. Resnick, M.S.; H. Rosson, Ph.D.; K. Rukieh, Ph.D.; N. Van Suetendael, Ph.D.; G. Shaykhian, Ph.D.; J. Vasquez, M.S.

Professor Emerita
Celine Lang, D.P.A.

Professors Emeriti
Frederick B. Buoni, Ph.D.; Gerald A. Marin, Ph.D.

Mission Statement

The mission of Florida Tech’s computer science and cybersecurity department is to prepare computing professionals for success and leadership in the conception, design, management, implementation and operation of complex real-world systems, and to expand knowledge and understanding of computing through research, scholarship and service.

Minor Program

A minor in computer science is offered through the department. A complete policy statement regarding minors can be found in the Academic Overview section. Information about current minor offerings is available through the individual colleges/departments.

Research

Computer sciences faculty members and students are conducting research in the following areas:

Computational intelligence: computer vision, constraint reasoning, data mining, machine learning, speech recognition, swarm intelligence, spatio-temporal multidimensional reasoning.

Computational science: bioinformatics, statistical computing.

Computer security: cryptology, cryptography and cryptanalysis; secure software development and testing; malicious code, network security, resilience and intrusion detection.

Distributed computing: agents and coordination, Internet computing, negotiations, peer-to-peer networks.

Languages: functional language, internationalization, type systems.

Software engineering: software documentation, maintenance and evolution, reliability and testing.

Research facilities provide open access to a wide range of computing hardware, operating systems, software development applications and general purpose computing applications. Several research centers and laboratories support specialized research interests of faculty and students.

BioComplex Laboratory: The laboratory focuses on the abstraction and modeling of real-world processes using techniques inspired in biology (mostly insect societies) and the use of theories from network science to uncover hidden patterns in complex systems. In network science, the lab has focused on the understanding of real-world phenomena such as academic production and organ transplantation, using concepts from statistical physics, graph theory and data mining. Biological-inspired subjects in the lab have concentrated on the production of algorithms and heuristics inspired from insect societies applied to real-world areas such as sensor networks and optimization. A more recent effort includes the understanding of human dynamics (movement) and related phenomena derived from such dynamics (such as crime prediction).

Center for Computation and Intelligence (CCI): The center studies how to make computers more intelligent as well as how intelligence can change the way we compute. Specifically, CCI investigates algorithms that can help computers learn (machine learning), listen (speech recognition), reason (constraint reasoning, spatio-temporal reasoning) and see (computer vision). Moreover, the center examines how distributed intelligent agents can interact (coordination, distributed constraint reasoning, cryptography). CCI also studies how simple animal behavior can provide a novel way to solve problems (swarm intelligence). Applications of techniques include computational biology, computer security, device monitoring, digital government, surveillance and Web personalization.

Center for Software Testing, Education and Research: One of the key barriers to effective testing in industry is weak education in the practical methods of software testing. The mission of the center is to create effective, grounded, timely materials to support the teaching and self-study of software testing, software reliability and quality-related software metrics. Examples of recent work can be found on the center’s Web site at www.testingeducation.org (see “Research” in the Institution Overview section).

Computer Vision Laboratory: This laboratory conducts research on computer vision, pattern recognition, and image and video processing. Ongoing research topics include human-motion recognition, object tracking, image registration and object recognition.

Harris Institute for Assured Information: The institute is funded by both industry and government sponsors and concentrates on all aspects of computer hardware and software security. Faculty participants are internationally recognized for their technical contributions, especially in the areas of hardware and software security testing. License agreements in place with a number of industry leaders enable the implementation of research results in commercial quality hardware and software products, focusing on assuring the integrity of computer hardware and software applications from malicious intrusion. The institute performs funded hardware and software testing, vulnerability testing, security assessments and basic research in computer security and software development testing (see “Research” in the Institution Overview section).