Student Research with Dr. Weiss
Brief Overview of Current Research
My current research focus involves WIreless Sensor
Data Mining, or WISDM. The WISDM project was launched
in 2009 and involves mining sensor data from smart phones. Currently
we focus on acceleromter data, which describes a user's movements, although
we are now branching out to other sensors, including GPS. The WISDM project
is described in great detail on the
WISDM project page. The project currently
involves approximately a dozen undergraduate and graduate students.
Using our custom developed WISDM platform, which was described in detail
in a recent publication,
we have implemented the following three sensor mining applications:
-
Activity recognition: determines the user's physical activity, such as walking
(paper)
-
Trait identification: determines user characteristics, such as height,
weight, and gender
(paper)
-
Biometric identification: identifies a user from a set of users
(paper)
Student Benefits
I believe that student research should be an essential part of both
undergraduate and graduate education. Due to the size, scope and
application-oriented nature of the WISDM research project, I believe
that WISDM provides an ideal environment for student research. Below are
just a few reasons that you might want to join the WISDM team:
-
WISDM research involves the programming of Android smart phones and the
development of cool, cutting edge, real world cell phone apps. In many
ways these powerful mobile devices are the future of computing and learning
to program with Android is a useful and marketable skill. Sensor
mining relies on data mining methods and learning how to use these
techniques is also a very important and marketable skill.
-
The project is a large collaborative project and students learn
to work on a team, using real-world collaboration tools (e.g., a source
code control). WISDM team members frequently interact with their peers
and learn from them.
-
WISDM student members have an outstanding track record of scholarly
publications. Every published WISDM paper has student co-authors
and in fact many of the papers list a Fordham student as the lead
(first) author. Students have presented their work at international
conferences with travel support from the WISDM project and Fordham.
-
Students on this project have an excellent track record of receiving
research funding. Details of student funding can be found on the
WISDM project
funding page (most of the faculty funding was also used to fund
student research). I currently have funds available for student
research from a Google Faculty Research Award and a Fordham Faculty
Research Grant.
-
While WISDM is about cutting edge research and applications, we also
host team building and social activities, such as the WISDM party, shown
in the picture at the bottom of this page (we watched
"The Social Network" before munching on local dessert delicacies). In
fact, in 2011 I secured a $2000 grant for team building activities,
which funded the party, food for our weekly meetings, and the purchase of
over 70 WISDM t-shirts (shown in the picture).
If you are Interested
I encourage all students, undergraduate and graduate, to engage in
research. There are many exciting projects in the CIS department and
you should consider your various alternatives. But
if you want to work on the WISDM project, or other data mining or machine
learning projects, feel free to contact me at
gweiss@cis.fordham.edu. You can find out more
about me on my home page.
If you join the WISDM project, you can do as much or little as you like. We
have some students with little free time who mainly attend the weekly
meetings and contribute here and there as they can-- and that is fine. The
main thing is to get involved in research. (Of course if you join us
you get a nice t-shirt!)
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