The National Emergency Number Association (NENA) ICE 6: End to End Test of i3 Architecture was recently hosted by Illinois Institute of Technology Real-Time Communications Lab, who provided infrastructure and technical support for the project (http://www.nena.org/?ICE6). This network architecture permits all 9-1-1 calls – wherever they originate – to be carried over an Internet backbone network with special IP telephony components that enable routing the call to the appropriate agency and providing the caller’s location to that agency so it can dispatch emergency support. Carol Davids, Director of the IIT Real-Time Communications Lab, and Industry Professor of Information Technology and Management (ITM), coordinated the event with NENA. Numerous ITM students and alumni provided technical support.

NENA oversees the 9-1-1 emergency network and serves the public safety community as the only professional organization solely focused on 9-1-1 policy, technology, operations, and education issues. With more than 7,000 members in 48 chapters across North America and around the globe, NENA promotes the implementation and awareness of 9-1-1 and international three-digit emergency communications systems.

NENA works with public policy leaders; emergency services and telecommunications industry partners; like-minded public safety associations; and other stakeholder groups to develop and carry out critical programs and initiatives; to facilitate the creation of an IP-based Next Generation 9-1-1 (NG9-1-1) system; and to establish industry leading standards, training, and certifications.

In NG9-1-1, all call media must be recorded, including voice, video, and text. In addition, all elements involved in call processing log event records for each step in the process. The NENA i3 Solution defines standard interfaces for recording and retrieving all of this data in order to provide historical records for legal purposes and for analyzing and troubleshooting NG9-1-1 processes. The ICE 6 event at Illinois Institute of Technology’s School of Applied Technology allowed vendors of all NG9-1-1 call processing elements to test logging, recording and retrieval interfaces while processing calls from origination to termination with different media types.

The event was open to NENA professionals only and was held at Illinois Institute of Technology, Rice Campus, Wheaton, IL from November 10-14, 2014. Over 50 registrants participated from cities across the US, Canada and Europe. In addition to Illinois Tech’s Industry Professor Carol Davids, Joe Cusimano, an RTC Lab Industry Mentor, led the lab’s ICE Test work supported by Student Support Team members, Bart Dworak, Kbrom Tewoldu, Christina (Cruz) Tovar and Michal Siuty. Members of Professor Davids’ IP Telecommunications course participated as observers, learning first-hand how the technology they are learning about in the classroom is being applied in the real world.

NENA chose IIT’s Real-Time Communications Lab (http://appliedtech.iit.edu/rtc-lab) for its outstanding resources and support and its proven record of past success with previous ICE events.

Learn more about the NENA ICE 6 event

ITM students Bill Wesselman and Maya Embar display their award for ACM RIIT 2014 Best Paper.

The Best Paper Award at the 3rd annual Association for Computing Machinery’s Research in Information Technology conference was won this year by the IIT ITM student team of Maya Embar, Louis McHugh, and William Wesselman for their paper “Printer Water-Mark Obfuscation”. Also presenting at the conference was ITM student Ben Khodja ( “Probabilistically Detecting Steganography withinMP3 Files” ) and ITM alumnus David Stacey (“Passive Warden Using Statistical Steganalysis”). The IIT papers were presented at a session chaired by Industry Professor Ray Trygstad, Associate Chair of IIT’s Department of Information Technology and Management. The RIIT conference was held in conjunction with the annual conference of the ACM Special Interest Group for Information Technology Education, October 15-18, 2014 in Atlanta, Georgia. Congratulations to Maya, Louis, and Bill for this recognition of their accomplishment.

This is the second year that an IIT paper has won the Best Paper award at RIIT. At last year’s RIIT conference in Orlando, Dr. C. Robert Carlson, Dean of the IIT School of Applied Technology, along with Dr. Sargon Hasso, a former PhD student of Dr. Carlson’s, won the award for their paper “Design Patterns as First-Class Connectors”.

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.