Department of Computer Science Home Page UNCC Home Page
07-01
Pandora I
Students Needed: 5 students for 1-2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

Security and privacy are important factors in organizations. There are several security technologies to achieve these security services. In this project, students will investigate how we can protect the cyber world from threats, risks, and attacks. And students will focus on a specific domain and implement the proof-of-concept prototype using COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) technology. The suggested domains include authentication, access control, cryptography, network security, PKI, intrusion detection, database security, Cyber terrorism, wireless security, copyrights protection, information assurance, and so on. The project efforts will continue through PANDORA II.

 

07-02
Pandora II
Students Needed: 5 students for 1-2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

This project deals with the advanced technologies for Security and Privacy pursuing an integrated security solution. In this project, students will investigate what kind of security technologies can be deployed to their outcome from Pandora I, redesign their architecture and implement its prototype using COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) technology, ensuring more robust and effective security services.

 



05-182
Game2Learn: Building Games to Teach Introductory Computer Science and Promote Diversity in IT
Students Needed: 1-6 students for 2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

This project investigates methods of teaching computer science that will appeal to a diverse population, with the goal of increasing the participation of underrepresented minorities in computer science. Students working on this project will design and build games or game components to teach important concepts in computer science, and conduct studies to determine their usability, playability, appeal to a wide audience, and effectiveness in teaching the chosen concept(s). Students should be proficient in statistics, algorithm development, and have good design and programming skills. Students in art/architecture/other disciplines are also encouraged to participate.

 

05-183
Educational Data Mining
Students Needed: 2 students for 2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

The Q-matrix Method is a heuristic hill-climbing method created to model knowledge in computer-based training programs. It has been shown to have some promise in data mining. This project will be a comparative study of the application of the Q-matrix method and other common data mining methods to several different types of data sets. Students should have good programming, mathematics, and organization skills.

 

07-185
Serious Games for Learning
Students Needed: 2-4 students for 2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

Students will develop and test a game for teaching health or cultural knowledge. Students should be proficient in statistics, algorithm development, and have good design and programming skills. Knowledge of C, C++, C#, and/or XNA, and experience or courses in HCI would be beneficial.

 

07-186
Supporting Collaboration and Evaluation for the STARS Alliance
Students Needed: 2-3 students for 2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

Students will assist in the support and evaluation of ongoing efforts to recruit and retain computing students at UNC Charlotte and across the STARS Alliance. Students will develop a website to facilitate communication and collaboration within and across the Alliance that will also be used to collect data on the effectiveness of the Alliance. Students should be outstanding in requirements engineering, and the design and development of reliable web pages using databases, security, document sharing with version control, and calendar support.

 



06-102
Graphic User Interface for Windows Applications
Students Needed: 2 students for 2 semesters Project Full

Project Description

This is a project family. Students will study MS Visual C++ and Windows GUI programming then design and implement a graphic user interface for a specific Windows application.

 



05-179
Explore Bots Testbed
Students Needed: 1 to 2 students for 2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

One or two students are needed to join other students in the Networking Research Lab to work on the Explorebots Testbed. The testbed consists of sensor-equipped mobile robots interconnected via an ad hoc wireless network. Students can work on building robots, developing front end or peer-to-peer code to control the robots, or on conducting experimental tests of wireless network protocols. Requirements: Students must have good programming skills and have taken an undergraduate networking course. Knowledge of hardware helps, but is not required.

 



07-203
Virtual Humans Project
Students Needed: 2 or 2 students for 2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

Build and test various applications of Virtual Humans. Programming experience through Data Structures with at least a 3.0 GPA. Willingness to learn to do speech recognition, computer animation, and text-to-speech using various commercial products and tools. This project requires attendance at weekly small group and large group meetings and a willingness to learn to give demos to visitors.

 



06-240
Malware Detection and Prevention
Students Needed: 1-5 students for 1-2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

We have an exciting research project that explores the use of Virtual Machine technique to detect and prevent the malware problems in the people’s pc. First, we will look into the rootkit detection technique and then seek into the prevention techniques.

 

06-241
Design Tool for IT Infrastructure Defense
Students Needed: 1-5 students for 1-2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

We first survey the existing IT infrastructure defense mechanisms such as firewall, IDS, and policy-driven protection measures. Then, the students will explore the IT design tool that can guide systems architect to implement the IT infrastructure in seamlessly secure manner. The tool can be an extension of ACE torpedo tool, where the check-list and the known vulnerability lists are dynamically presented per each IT services such as web, email, and file systems. An infrastructure management and architect experience would be a plus but not required.

 

06-242
Email Authentication and Authorization
Students Needed: 1-5 student 1-2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

We are exploring a new email authorization mechanism based on privilege concept. Student will be involved in researching and developing the email client for this p-messaging.

 



07-231
Storytelling in Information Visualization
Students Needed: 1 student for 2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

Information visualization is an effective way of analyzing data, but can also be used to communicate. Social visualization websites like Swivel and Many Eyes are showing the considerable interest in this aspect of visualization (as opposed to analysis of very specific data). In this project, we will explore ways to make this communication more effective and to tell little stories about the data. Requirements for this project are good Java programming skills and at least an interest in visual design and (visual) communication.

 

07-232
Exploring the Visualization Design Space
Students Needed: 1 student for 2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

Information visualization produces images from data to enable the user to visually analyze the data. We will explore the difference good or bad visual design choices can make even in simple visualizations (bar charts, treemaps) by implementing them in a program and testing them with users in a small study. I am looking for a student with good Java programming skills and an art/design background or at least a good eye for design).

 

07-233
Visual CAPTCHAs
Students Needed: 1 student for 2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

CAPTCHAs are an important tool to prevent spamming of blogs, discussion forums, etc. Most of these are based on text which is distorted in different ways, gets noise added, etc. In this project, we will develop CAPTCHAs that use simple visual problems, and test them against text-based CAPTCHAs to see which ones are easier for humans and harder for computers to solve. Requirements: good programming skills, knowledge of PHP.

 

07-234
Flow Visualization and Art
Students Needed: 1 student for 2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

A class of flow visualization techniques works by distorting images repeatedly to show the flow of material on a plane. By providing different types of interaction, we can also use these methods to produce images that are interesting from an artistic point of view. This project aims to develop the tools for doing this. Requirements: good Java programming skills and at least basic knowledge of graphics programming (the project will use OpenGL).

 



06-281
Rotational Mouse Prototyping Project
Students Needed: 1 student for 1 semester Project Available

Project Description

This project involves brainstorming, prototyping and evaluating some ideas for how a mouse with rotation sensing capabilities could be used in a user interface. This project would not involve any coding, but would require some research into the literature on mouse ration.

 

06-282
The Dual-Cursor Flash Framework
Students Needed: 1 student for 1 semester Project Available

Project Description

Enabling dual cursors in an interface allows for a wide variety of enhanced interaction techniques. Imagine being able to and move an object at the same time by using tow cursors to grab the corners of the object, at the same time. Adobe Flash is a great tool for protyping new interaction ideas. This project would involve creating a framework within Flash to support dual-cursor interaction prototyping where the two cursors are controlled by two USB mice. This project is suited toa student with Flash programming experience. Once the framework is in place, it would be great for the student to use the framework to test a new interaction idea.

 

07-285
Dual-Cursor Nintendo Wii Drawing Program
Students Needed: 2 students for 2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

This project involves porting a dual-cursor drawing program from the Mac platform to run with Nintendo Wii Remotes as the input devices, with the image projected onto a wall display.

 

07-286
Dual-Cursor Nintendo Wii Photo Manipulation Program
Students Needed: 1 student for 2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

This project involves modifying a dual-cursor photo manipulation program on the Max platform to run with Nintendo Wii Remotes as the input devices, with the image projected onto a wall display.

 

07-287
Dual-Cursor Mac to Windows Port
Students Needed: 1 student for 2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

This project involves creating a dual-cursor driver for the windows platform that will enable existing dual-cursor Mac applications to work under Windows XP and/or Vista.

 

08-288
Dance.Draw
Students Needed: 1 student for 2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

Research interactive dance and compile a list of what other people have already done in this area (name of dance troupe/choreographer, name of production, types of technology used and description of how it is used). Help design and prototype software wizards to be developed for new versions of the Dance.Draw system.  Serve as a technical support person for Dance.Draw performances, attending the performances to set up the technology, run the system and trouble-shoot if anything goes wrong.  Deliverables will include a report on interactive dance that has been done elsewhere, a report documenting software wizard designs/prototypes and how they have been evaluated, and a final report detailing experiences supporting Dance.Draw productions.

 



06-150
Building Semantic Web from Generic Object Model (GenOM)
Students Needed: 2 students for 2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

The project will investigate research issues on building Semantic Web from Generic Object Model (GenOM). The objects in GenOM and the relationships between objects are transformed into interoperable and reusable objects representation space by using the concepts from Semantic Web. The project will include the following tasks: - Understanding concepts of Semantic Web - Understanding of current implementation of Semantic Web - Literature survey of Semantic Web applications - Understanding of GenOM, Ontology and Software Patterns - Design and Implementation of object representation transformation (ORT) that generates interoperable and reusable object representation - Integration of ORT into the current implementation of GenOM - Experimental study of applying the results into real domain applications such as RBAC, EDI, and Workflow management. Estimate of supplies/equipment required, and source of same. The project requires knowledge of XML and programming skills.

 

06-155
Information Security Requirements Evaluation Methodology
Students Needed: 1 student for 2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

The project will apply novel software requirements engineering methodology to requirements and policies in the information security domain in order to provide an integrated environment for requirements discovery and management. The students should have knowledge of XML and programming skills.

 

06-156
Building Software Design Patterns through Semantic Association Rules from Object Models
Students Needed: 1 student for 2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

The project will investigate research issues on building Software Patterns through semantic association rules that are created from domain object models. Software Patterns represent the feature networks of domain object models in software design and provide foundations for theoretical analysis of relationships between objects in Software Patterns. The project requires knowledge of XML and Object-oriented (OO) programming skills such as C, C++, or Java.

 



06-20
DEPARTMENTAL SUPPORT
Needed: 1-4 students for 1-2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

*IMPORTANT* This project will meet every other Friday at 11am. If you can not make this meeting because of class, work, or etc., DO NOT sign up for this project. Attendance to this meeting is required. Actual efforts within this overall senior project will vary over time and be dependent on departmental needs. This project can range from making updates to exisiting programs, creating new programs, or creating web pages and updating old pages.

 



06-30
Worm Detection
Students Needed: 2 student for 2 semesters Project Full

Project Description

Design fast and accurate ways to detect computer worms. Good programming skills are required.

 

06-31
Web 2.0 Services
Students Needed: 2 students for 2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

Research on web2.0 (including on RSS, blogs and etc). Good web programming skills are required.

 

06-35
Active Response for Computer Worms and Viruses
Students Needed: 2 students for 1-2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

Research on automatic responses to computer worms and viruses so that the damage can be under better control. Good programming skills are required.

 



06-210
Create Digital Forensic Evidence
Students Needed: 1 student for 2 semesters Project Full

Project Description

Computer forensics is the science of investigating digital evidence. In order for students to have the experience of conducting an investigation, digital evidence associated with a crime must be created and stored in an appropriate form. This project will consist of three parts: (1) create a scenario for a crime involving a significant amount of digital evidence such as e-mail, files on a hard drive, cell phone records, digital photographs, etc., (2) create and store this digital evidence in a format sufficient for a student investigator to evaluate and determine the crime, and (3) document the crime and evidence so that the student result can be compared with the original crime. This project is limited to students who have completed ITIS 4250.

 

06-211
Honeynet Monitoring
Students Needed: 1 student for 2 semesters Project Full

Project Description

Participate in the Honeynet Project by monitoring the department’s honeynet for network-based attacks, gathering information on attack patterns and strategies, assisting in developing tools and countermeasures, and learning and using analytical software associated with network security attacks. Students would be expected to work within a team environment.

 

07-212
Website Update
Students Needed: 1 student for 1 semesters Project Available

Project Description

Visual and functional update to Web site to add full XHTML compliance, CSS capability, dynamic theme selection, content management, RSS support, and XML/XLS templates.

 

08-213
Corporate Forensics
Students Needed: 1 student for 2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

To research and describe the day-to-day functions of a corporate forensics team, specifically the methods and practices associated with:

  1. The prevention of breaches in information systems and network security systems
  2. Monitoring of critical network access points using Intrusion Detection solutions
  3. The detection of harmful or malicious network infiltration attempts
  4. Corporate incident response procedures, including actions associated with mitigation and isolation of intrusions
  5. Minimizing risks associated with the insider threat
In addition, the student will develop a minimum of three case studies of actual events such as intrusion detection, threat mitigation, or incident response. Each study will include a description of the event, the response measures employed by the forensics team, and an analysis of the outcome.

 



06-113
Visualization on Security and Privacy
Students Needed: 1 student for 2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

Visualization is a useful tool to handle security and privacy problems, because of the large data amount. Visualization on security and privacy is a relatively new topic in both research fields, yet already shows potential to view and solve problems that are difficult to previous approaches. In this project, students will explore interactive visualization techniques to handle problems in network security and information assurance.

 

06-114
Non-Photorealistic Real-time Rendering
Students Needed: 2 students for 2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

Artistic paintings and scientific illustrations have shown to be very effective ways in representing both geometry objects and scientific datasets. This project is to explore the valuable approaches from artists to apply in graphics and visualization. Prerequisits: good programming skills in C++, previous courses on graphics/vis.

 

06-115
Visualization Design and Evaluation
Students Needed: 1 student for 2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

Human factors play an important role in visualization to improve our understanding of large amount of complex information. This project is to explore convenient and efficient visualization designs by using important human factors. Initial user studies will be performed to evaluate the proposed designs.

 



06-71
LOGIC DESIGN FOR COMPUTER INTERFACING
Students Needed: 2 students for 1-2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

This project centers around logic design and simulation. The basic idea is to design a central controller that can play as an interface between a computer host and a special purpose system for particular applications. The special purpose system is either predesigned or is a hardware simulation program of the design. The student working on this project will use C programming language for programming and actual digital component for design of the central controller.

 

06-72
Biomedical Instrumentation Projects
Students Needed: 3 students for 2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

Project involves analysis of all kinds of bio and medical data including, but not limited to, medical images (x-ray, ultrasound, and MRI), and DNA.

 

06-73
Bioinformatics Software Development and Testing
Students Needed: 1 student for 2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

Bioinformatics is a field of computer science that was born from the Genetic revolution. Bioinformatics melds computer science application development and biology to create solutions for many topics including the analysis of DNA sequences, genes, protein structures, protein folding, cellular system and other topics. Microarrays are devices used to do large scale genetic analysis. These devices are able to produce tens of thousands of pieces of information, all of which need to be manipulated in a controlled environment. These applications require advanced levels of automated testing to effectively control software quality. Advanced testing techniques for an application that works with such large data sets is the central focus of this project. Topics that could be covered are automated unit testing with JUnit, the creation of Regression suites (for integration testing and unit testing), creation of test databases as well as other topics. An intermediate knowledge of Java programming and J2BC is preferred. Knowledge of JUnit, Automated Testing / Regression suite techniques is a plus but not required.

 

06-74
Graphic Bioinformatics Software Reporting
Students Needed: 1 student for 2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

Bioinformatics is a field of computer science that was born from the Genetic revolution. Bioinformatics melds computer science application development and biology to create solutions for many topics including the analysis of DNA sequences, genes, protein structures, protein folding, cellular system and other topics. Microarrays are devices used to do large scale genetic analysis. These devices are able to produce tens of thousands of pieces of information, all of which need to be manipulated in a controlled environment. To effectively communicate application output, portable and easy to understand representations of data need to be created to represent very large sets of data. The focus of this project will be to create HTML reporting and associated graphics, programmatically, in a way that best represents data from analysis on Microarray populations. An intermediate knowledge of Java programming and HTML preferable, but not required. Knowledge of Java 2D API and JavaScript is helpful but not required.

 

06-76
Genome Visualization and Analysis
Students Needed: 1 student for 2 semesters Project Full

Project Description

Students will work on a novel approach to exploratory analysis of genome data through visualization. They will help design the visual interface for the genome navigation and correlative analysis. Tools they develop will be both analysis tools and database access tools. Some students will help develop methods to ingest bioinformatics data, launch comparative analyses, retrieve and compare results, and track annotations made by scientists using the system.

 



06-260
Developing a Search Engine for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks
Students Needed: 2 students for 1 semester Project Available

Project Description

Students are needed to assist in the development of a search engine for mobile Ad Hoc networks. This project includes user interface design, development of a stand-alone web browser, and the use of a Java-based programming package designed to simplify the acquisition of web pages from a mobile Ad Hoc network.

 

07-261
Developing Applications for a Network of Mobile Robots
Students Needed: 2 students for 1 semester Project Available

Project Description

The ultimate goal of this project is to demonstrate the ability to simplify the development of applications for dynamic pervasive computing environments, particularly for settings that are equipped with mobile robots that have wireless communication capabilities. In these settings, network communication links are dynamically formed between the robots and other devices as they come within wireless communication range, without any connection to the Internet or cellular telephone network. In this project, students will develop and test applications for robots that take advantage of the information and services made available by other wireless devices in the area. The technology used to support these applications is a collection of iRobot Create robots (based on the Roomba vacuuming robots), as well as small mobile computing devices and sensors. Programming skills in Java and/or C++ are required, a previous course on networking is preferred, and the student must be willing to learn and work with UNIX command line tools.

 



06-60
Risk Management in Multiagent Systems
Students Needed: 1 student for 2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

Conservative design is the ability of an individual agent to ensure predictability of its overall performance even if some of its actions and interactions may be inherently less predictable or even completely unpredictable. In this project, the participant will implement risk management techniques from Operation Research and related literature to control the entropy of a supply chain modeled as a multi-agent system.

 

06-61
Role of Constraint Optimization Algorithms in Wireless Network Resource Management
Students Needed: 1 student for 2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

The objective of this research is to model a Wireless Local Area network (WLAN) as a multi-agent system and to ensure that system resources are shared fairly among multiple agents to optimize the overall performance. This research emphasizes the underlying predictability of network conditions and promotes management solutions tailored to different interference environments. The student will implement a distributed constraint optimization problem (DCOP) algorithm for the multi-agent system and study the effectiveness of DCOP algorithms to find the optimal resource assignment through communications between distributed agents.

 

06-62
A Numerical Method for Controlling Uncertainty Propagation in Large-Scale Multi-agent Systems
Students Needed: 1 student for 2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

Mathematical models of complex processes provide precise definitions of the processes and facilitate the predication of process behavior for varying contexts. In this work, the student will implement a numerical method for modeling the propagation of uncertainty in a multi-agent system (MAS) and a qualitative justification for this model. This model will help determine the effect of various types of uncertainty on different parts of the multi-agent system; facilitate the development of distributed policies for containing the uncertainty propagation to local nodes; and estimate the resource usage for such policies.

 

07-63
Empirical Study of a Multi-Agent System
Students Needed: 1 student for 2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

This project will involve a research experience where the student will assist graduate students in their research work by running extensive evaluation runs of a complex multi-agent system. The student will perform statistical studies of system performance and also scan the log files to identify areas where the system can be improved.

 



05-85
Modeling and Rendering Virtual Charlotte
Students Needed: 1 student for 2 semesters Project Full

Project Description

In this project students will help create a large scale 3D model of Charlotte including the Uptown area and the UNC Charlotte campus. They will also help develop interactive rendering techniques for navigation and exploration of the model. Some graphics programming skills (C++ and OpenGl programming) are required for parts of the project.

 

05-86
Techniques and Topics in Information Visualization
Students Needed: 1 student for 2 semesters Project Full

Project Description

Students will learn techniques for the visualization and analysis of non-spatial data (such as business records, multimedia databases, etc.). These include methods for dealing with large datasets that may have a large number of dimensions. They will then apply these methods to developing visual analysis tools for specific datasets.

 

05-89
Simulation using ns2 for wireless network security
Students Needed: 3-4 students for 2 semesters Project Full

Project Description

This project will use NS2 as a simulation tool to simulate the trust establishments and changes dynamically, for wireless ad-hoc networks. The students must know C++ programming language very well.

 



06-142
Investigating Map Use Behavior
Students Needed: 2 students for 2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

In this project, you will be responsible for performing a series of user evaluations on interaction map interfaces. These evaluations will involve creating map-based task and for users to perform, customizing current map interfaces to examine different content and context changes to the interface, helping to design and carry out usability studies on those interfaces, and analyzing participant behavior from those user studies. Interest in human-computer interaction is required, previous course in HCI is preferred but not required.

 



07-310
Online Secure Mash-ups
Students Needed: 2 students for 2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

This project investigates the design and implementation of Web 2.0 mash-up technologies. It investigates possible approaches to extend current online mash-up technologies such as yahoo Pipes and Apatar. Students will learn how to design, implement and build mash-ups.

 

07-311
Database Security and Access Control
Students Needed: 2 students for 2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

This project investigates the design and implementation of different access control mechanisms in legacy database systems such as PostgreSQl. The project is targeted towards investigating new mechanisms to enhance policy evaluations in database systems.

 

07-312
Efficient XACML Policy Evaluation
Students Needed: 2 students for 2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

XACML stands for XML Access Control Markup Language, which currently the standard access control language for web services and online systems. Access control can be a bottleneck in online systems if policies are not efficiently evaluated. This project will investigate the XACML policy evaluation mechanisms, to guide the design of more efficient XACML parsers. This project includes both a design and hands-on components.

 



06-127
Research in Computer Vision
Students Needed: 5 students for 2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

The project will involve in the research in the area of medical imaging, gesture recognition, face recognition and other research topics using digital image processing and computer vision algorithms. Requirements:ITCS 3134

 



06-250
Human Motion Capture
Students Needed: 1 students for 2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

Aid in the design and construction of a multi-camera human motion capture hardware installation. Testing will require the implementation of new and existing algorithms for human motion capture.

 

06-251
Video Analysis Tools for Biomedical Data
Students Needed: 2 students for 2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

Aid in the design and development of a video manipulation tool for medical imaging research. Depnding on the student's level of interest, this project can range from GUI design and development to research work in computer vision and biomedical image analysis.

 

06-252
Video Analysis for Simulation Design
Students Needed: 2 students for 2 semesters Project Available

Project Description

This project involves the analysis of firefighter training videos in order to aid in the design of a simulator. Depending on the student's level of interest, this project can range from video capture and editing, to implementing existing tracking algorithms to research work in computer vision and video analysis.

 



06-161
Sensor Network Visualization Tools
Students Needed: 1 or 2 students for 2 semesters