Participants are requested to choose their desired topic from the following list:
Cloud computing is maturing and stabilizing as a universal computing model. Growth of third party ‘Cloud Infrastructure’ is helping organizations to adopt ‘Cloud first’ strategy by moving their on premises applications safe to cloud. Cloud is enabling organizations to focus on core business, minimize expenditure on computer infrastructure and maintenance without compromising on computing requirements of their organizations. Third party Cloud Computing Service providers, deliver Cloud infrastructure as two basic service models-Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS).
IaaS offers Virtual Machines, File Storage, Firewalls, Load Balancers and IP addresses. While PaaS offers operating systems, Execution Runtime, Databases, Web servers and DEV tools.
Students can propose innovative projects on any one of the components of IaaS and PaaS.
The convergence of cloud and mobile computing will continue to promote the growth of centrally coordinated applications that can be delivered to any device. Cloud is the new style of elastically scalable, self-service computing, and both internal and external applications will be built on this new style. In the near term, the focus for cloud/client will be on synchronizing content and applications across multiple devices and addressing application portability across devices. Over time, applications will evolve to support simultaneous use of multiple devices. In the future, games and enterprise applications alike will use multiple screens and exploit wearables and other devices to deliver an enhanced experience. Example: As the need for cloud based apps and services continues to grow, there will be a need for a development model for these applications and services, which will support the cloud based software development lifecycle.
Microservices: For simple and limited scale applications monolithic architecture is still relevant. Modern cloud application that requires agility scale and reliability, Microservices Architecture offers great promise. A Microservices application is composed of independent components called ‘Microservices’ that work in concert to deliver overall functionality of the application. Unlike monolithic applications, Microservices applications enable the separation of application from underlying IT infrastructure.
Students are encouraged to propose projects on Cloud Applications and Microservices. Projects should be complete in all features and demonstrable.
Depending on the security landscape and attack vectors, security hardening is important for various use-cases of technology implementation. Range of security technologies exists for various domains and its use-cases. Enhancements/improvements & innovations into these security use cases for specific implementations are also required to keep up with changing landscapes and postures.
Software innovations around security technologies that can handle various use cases are welcome. You can also consider hardware assisted security models too as part of PoC.
Multi-modal biometrics are fast becoming the go-to security option for enterprises that want to offer the most secure authentication and the most convenience for their customers. Multi-modal authentication benefits the enterprise in three specific ways. It vastly improves the customer experience with no cumbersome passwords to remember. It improves the security of traditional authentication and prevents hacking and data breaches. We are looking for new ideas around it and use cases, it could be anything from biometric verification, image verification or design ideas which can be used across multiple industry/ business domains ranging from Financial, Transportation & Logistics, Social services, Safe cities and Life sciences & Healthcare.
The combination of data streams and services created by digitizing everything creates four basic usage models — Manage, Monetize, Operate, and Extend. These four basic models can be applied to any of the four "Internets." Enterprises should not limit themselves to thinking that only the Internet of Things (assets and machines) has the potential to leverage these four models. For example, the pay-per-use model can be applied to assets (such as industrial equipment), services (such as pay-as-you-drive insurance), people (such as movers), places (such as parking spots), and systems (such as cloud services). Enterprises from all industries can leverage these four models.
Students are encouraged to propose projects which are based on Internet of Things.
Digitization and cheap storage has led to the generation of lots of data both structured and unstructured which we call Big Data. This along with advances in Machine Learning and Deep Learning has enabled us in two primary ways. One is to be able to understand the complex interrelationship of data thus helping in deriving hidden patterns in data enabling us to make better business decisions like predictive and prescriptive analytics. The second is to automate processes and bring in intelligence into digital things. With faster data management and computing technologies available, it has also become imperative to come up with intelligence based on data and information that is real time or near real time. Use of Analytics to come up with Cognitive (Human Like) and intelligent interactions in a B2C scenario is becoming more prevalent. This helps in better personalization and reduces operations costs for businesses. Other than customer generated data which includes open data sources and the dark internet, sensors, chips, machines and other digital devices generate time series/stamped data which also interact with each other for various outcomes. IoT Analytics deals with this stream of Analytics primarily.
We are interested in students developing solutions in each of the areas talked about above. Predictive Maintenance solutions for IoT equipped devices, Cognitive interfaces like Chatbots and contextual text miners using NLP, Deep Learning based Picture and Video recognition solutions which can go beyond face recognition but can identify from other pictures like X-Ray scans etc., Bayesian Network based Anomaly Detection and outcome predictors, Neural Network driven decision and automation management systems are examples of some of the solutions and capabilities being looked at and developed by us at Unisys. We use the latest codebases and platforms to build our solutions on the Amazon clouds and other APIs and codebases provided by Python, Google APIs etc.
With mobile phones becoming more powerful, there is increased emphasis on serving the needs as well as harnessing the power of the mobile user in diverse environments, as opposed to focusing on devices alone. For example, backend processing for data personalization and patternization, and use of these patterns to create more effective and efficient context sensitive information sharing for the end user’s benefit. Students are encouraged to propose projects which are based on the concept of Computing Everywhere.
Computer Scientists around the world are doing extensive research in different areas. Few of these technologies may emerge and change computing in the near future such as Block Chain, Cognitive Computing, Application Defined Data Center, Micro segmentation and Fintech (Financial Technology). We are looking at submissions that come up with innovative ideas in these areas, addressing various aspects of implementation and usage.
Ubiquitous embedded intelligence combined with pervasive analytics will drive the development of systems that are alert to their surroundings and able to respond appropriately. Context-aware security is an early application of this new capability, but others will emerge. By understanding the context of a user request, applications can not only adjust their security response, but also adjust how information is delivered to the user, greatly simplifying an increasingly complex, computing world.
We encourage students to submit and work on these potential technologies.
Be it large, small, or medium sized, every business is now talking about cloud computing. Airports are no different. Fundamentally, airports are like clouds that provide a shared network, shared check-in systems, baggage reservation systems, and other IT infrastructure that is leveraged by all airlines operating in and out of the airport. Airport operators are under constant pressure to maintain a state-of-the-art IT environment, but find themselves year-on-year with shrinking IT budgets. We are interested in papers that explore the various solutions in an airport that can be part of a cloud and intelligibly analyze the tangible and intangible benefits that would accrue by implementing such solutions.
Virtual Simulation:
Virtual reality simulation is the use of 3D objects and environments to create immersive and engaging experiences. Transport products such as Airline passenger service, Airline cargo, Airport operations etc. which deals with the multiple subjects, their movement, synchronization of information, Geo-location, subject identification etc. can find numerous usage with the virtual simulation. Its usage into product development are immense, they not only help in discovering the hidden business cases, which can be incorporated into the product but also can play an important role during product testing with better visualization.
Software Telemetry Service:
Telemetry includes capturing, processing and interactive display of software usage trends. Data regarding an application’s usage along with users’ profile (keeping PII -Personally identifiable information - outside) is gathered from multiple channels. All ingestion points contribute data towards a single repository. Analytics is developed against this data repository to understand usage trends based on different personas which allow product team to understand the impact areas for further focus and derive business insights.
Students are encouraged to work on any transportation domain projects.
Cloud Computing is still in the realm of research and development. Organizations/ Universities are spending money and effort to achieve newer breakthroughs. Students are encouraged to submit projects on emerging cloud technologies related to following research topics:
There is a great need for rapid creation of fully functional prototypes of new applications to get them into the hands of sales people to initiate a sales cycle, while the production application is under development. Though there are many prototyping tools available today, little or no coded UI components are created that enable reusability in the production development cycle. Prototypes would also be used to gather user feedback and modify the prototypes to help shape the final production application. Students are encouraged to work on projects that address the problem statement.
IT security analysts are being flooded with data streaming from a wide variety of sensors, deep packet inspectors, SIEM tools, etc. This data is usually presented in the form of log events, status messages, and security alerts, and quickly becomes overwhelming for human analysts to understand. While machine learning and AI can help make some sense of the data by creating models of expected behavior, it still requires an analyst to dive deeply into the data to investigate anomalous activity, or to resolve conflicting alerts.
Similarly, IoT sensors generate prodigious amounts of real-time data which needs to be ingested, processed, and examined against operational norms.
The human visual system has evolved over millions of years to detect and focus on anomalies, while ignoring mundane recurring patterns. For example, one can arrive to work with no recollection of the morning commute. Yet, if something unusual occurs in our visual field, it stands out and instantly focuses our attention.
We are looking for research projects which investigate how to leverage this uniquely human ability, combined with state of the art VR/AR tools to better detect, analyze and remediate security and operational issues buried in masses of normal security and/or IoT data.
Agile methodologies (DevOps) are popular in the industry with rapid prototyping and release. Integration of security concepts into this framework is usually done haphazardly or not at all – what was usually done at the end of the development process now has to be integrated back into the process – probably with tools and automation. How can we ensure security in everything as we sprint and scrum?
Students are encouraged to propose projects in this area.
Blockchain is a distributed database system - this means, instead of storing files on a single computer, information is stored across millions of computers all over the globe. It gives end users the power to control their personally identifiable information. We are increasingly observing a wider range of use cases for blockchain across small and large-scale applications.
One of the biggest growth areas of blockchain will be supply chain management. Blockchain can be used to minimize errors in logistics and to track deliveries and transactions in the supply chain with improved accuracy, security and speed compared to previous solutions. We invite proof of concepts(PoCs) in supply chain management in the fields of Tracking, Recording, Assigning, Linking and Sharing of assets while maintaining immutability and provenance.
