ITMO is holding its second annual IIT on da Cloud event this Friday, October 25 from 12:00 to 9:00pm (open to all IIT students).

The event features guest speakers who will talk about cloud computing and how it is used. At 2:00 the event will relocate to the IdeaShop for a night of setting up full cloud systems and developing apps to run on this cloud.

Check out the event: https://www.eventbrite.com/event/8947216365
Check out the HackNight: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/8977095735/eorg

Fifty for the Future honoree Zeina Abdul Samad

Congratulations to three IIT students who have been selected to receive the 2013 Fifty For The Future® award from the Illinois Technology Foundation, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the development of the technology talent pipeline in the State of Illinois.

First-year ITM undergraduate, Eric Tendian, was nominated by ITM Adjunct Industry Professor, Bill Slater. ITM undergraduate Zeina Abdul Samad was nominated by ITM Industry Professor Ray Trygstad. The third IIT recipient is a Computer Science graduate student, Scott Krieder.

Each student, as well as the faculty member who nominated him/her will receive a $1000 scholarship to Directions Training’s extensive catalog of offerings.

The Fifty For The Future® Celebration is attended by information technology executives, industry leaders, judges, Foundation sponsors and other supporters of the technology industry. The students will receive their awards at the 7th Annual Celebration event November 12 at the Chicago Cultural Center.

Dr. Carlson and Dr. Hasso receiving the Best Paper award

Dr. C. Robert Carlson, Dean of the School of Applied Technology, earned the best paper award at the 2nd Annual Conference on Research in Information Technology (RIIT) held in conjunction with the ACM 14th Annual Conference in Information Technology Education (SIGITE), October 10-12. Dr. Carlson, along with Dr. Sargon Hasso, a former PhD student of Dr. Carlson’s, presented the paper “Design Patterns as First-Class Connectors” in the Software Development track. Their approach is a compositional model based on design patterns by abstracting their behavioral model using role modeling constructs. They demonstrated their technique by presenting a simple case study complete with design and implementation code. Dr. Hasso is currently employed at Wolters Kluwer.

Dr. Carlson was accompanied to the conference by Industry Professor Ray Trygstad, Associate Chair of IIT’s Department of Information Technology and Management. Professor Trygstad also serves as the Chair of the National Board of Directors for Gamma Nu Eta, the National Information Technology Honor Society. He represented Gamma Nu Eta, who was a Silver Sponsor for the conference.

Dr. Carlson also served as Session Chair for the presentations of “Leveraging HCI in Teaching Mobile, ‘Anywhere and Everywhere’ IT” and “Flipping the Classroom – Is it for you?” as part of the Mobile IT Technology track of the conference.

IIT alumnus Fernando Seror Garcia at the Poster Session

As part of the Security 1 track, IIT alumnus Mikhail Zaturenskiy, who worked with Professor Bill Lidinsky, presented his paper “MP3 Files as a Steganography Medium.” This paper looks at ways to hide information inside MP3 files and proposes four largely unexplored techniques: unused header bit stuffing, unused side information bit stuffing, empty frame stuffing, and ancillary bit stuffing.

As part of the RIIT Poster Session, IIT 2013 ITM alumnus Fernando Seror Garcia, presented his project, “DNS (Do Not Suspect).” The purpose of this project is to see if it would be possible for an attacker to use the DNS protocol to communicate with a bot of his own in an infected host in order to avoid being detected.

ITM faculty members and students will not only attend, but will present and chair sessions at the 14th Annual Conference in Information Technology Education (SIGITE) and the 2nd Annual Conference on Research in Information Technology (RIIT) in Orlando, Florida, October 9-12, 2013. This dual conference, conducted by the Association for Computing Machinery’s (ACM) Special Interest Group in Information Technology Education (SIGITE), provides a forum for sharing and developing ideas relating to Information Technology research, education, applications, IT-industry-academia relationships and our roles as professionals, educators, and advocates for the effective use of Information Technology.

School of Applied Technology Dean Dr. C. Robert “Bob” Carlson will chair Paper Session A2: Mobile and will present a paper, “Design Patterns as First-Class Connectors.” ITM graduate student Mikhail Zaturenskiy will present his paper “MP3 Files As A Steganography Medium” while graduate student Fernando Seror Garcia will conduct an RIIT Poster Session session entitled “DNS (Do Not Suspect).” ITM Associate Chair Ray Trygstad will also attend the conference.

ITM Adjunct Industry Professor Bill Slater knows data centers. With years of experience as a data center manager at BP and a stint as the first manager of Microsoft’s Northlake Data Center, which was the world’s largest data center when it opened, Professor Slater now passes along his knowledge and wisdom to graduate students in the ITM graduate specialization in Data Center Operations and Management. He also knows that industry events such as the 2013 Data Center Dynamics Conference are a good place to learn the latest and greatest developments in the field. With his encouragement and assistance, several of his students attended the conference, which was held at the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place in Chicago, IL, on October 1, 2013. ITM students Girithar Anthay Suthakavan, Shikha Srivastava, Samah Sallam and Adem Maksuti spent the day at the world’s largest peer-led data center conference & expo attending educational sessions and meeting vendors–and prospective employers! Conferences such as this are common in IT subject areas in Chicago, and we encourage students to attend to learn and network. And thanks go to Professor Slater for making this a great experience for our students.

Adjunct Industry Professor of ITM Bill Slater (center) and ITM students Girithar Anthay Suthakavan, Shikha Srivastava, Samah Sallam and Adem Maksuti (left to right), at the 2013 Data Center Dynamics Conference.