Although I am no longer interested in BBS. It reminds me of the old times. Here is the link.

时尤社区

HAHAHA, okay, I admit that posting the link here can improve the rank in Google....

Is graduate school fun?

 

This question really depends on how you perceive your graduate life. I see some students(not in IST) who do not really like their research and have a very tough life. But in IST I see many senior students who really enjoy their life here.

 

Based on my perception, these guys have some common characteristics.

First, they love their research. They have a clear picture about the research they are doing and the future development of the research.

Second, they work very hard in office, they never waste their time in school and after they go back home, they can do whatever they want outside study.

Third, they have a lot of hobbies. Like soccer, fishing, travelling and so forth. They use their hobbies as their reward of hard working. One of my friend who is in his third year of PHD here loves fishing very much. Last week he had a very research proposal to finish which is really hard. He told me that he promised to himself, if he could finish the proposal on time, he will drive to a place in Maryland which is a very good place for fishing. And finally he accomplished the task.

 

So, what is graduate school funny for me?

I think one thing is the feeling of satisfaction. Everytime when I finish a presentation, a project, a paper, I feel really satisfied by myself and I love this feeling.

What's more? I like IST because I can know many people from different areas including business, psychology, computer graphics and so forth. I learned a lot from them and I am always interested in different areas as I have mentioned in my ealier blogs.

And, parites with friends are also fun. People from differnt countries or areas cook various food and talk about everything. That kind of feeling is amazing.

Finally, one great thing here is to talk with my advisor in our research. It is significantly exciting!!

Although I have been in State College for only three months, I have already joined two clubs.

The first one is Chinese Friendship Association Soccer Club. This club is organized by a student in IST, Leon. This club is very successful, we play on every Saturday afternoon at a high school in State College. In addition to soccer, this club also has a close relationship between members. I dont have a car now and everytime people will pick me up at my apartment and sent me back after the game. I get to familiar with many senior students in PSU who are very helpful in many aspects. Oh, BTW, although this club is organized by CFA, actually there are not only Chinese students in the club. If you are interested in soccer and wanna exercise regularly, this club is a very good choice.

The second one is a Chinese Qigong Club.  Actually, this club is organized by an American and most members are American. I was always very interested in the mystery of ancient Chinese Qigong. However, when I was in China I never found a chance to learn it. Fortunately, during the graudate school orientation, I met Joe, who is the organizor of this club and decided to join the club. I was really suprised during the first meeting because there are many American here in State College who are so intersted in Chinese ancient Qigong. What's more, they study really hard in Qigong and they do not just practice it, instead, they do a lot of research on it. They gather a lot of information including academic papers, video record, books about Qigong and try to think about why Qigong could improve human health. Since Qigong is from ancient China, many materials are in Chinese, but they study Chinese as well. Most of them could speak a little Chinese and with the help of electronical dictionary, they even try to understand those stuff. Which really make me feel that they are really serious about learning Qigong. Up to now, I have not entered the door of Qigong yet since it usually takes several months to years until one person could feel the Qi inside their body. But I wiill keep practicing.

Ok, these are two clubs that I am already in. However, there are still one club that I want to join which is the toast master club here in State College. Actually, there are three such clubs in SC but they are doing almost same thing. Toast master club is aimed to help members improve their ability of giving speech during various situations and finally become a toast master. Usually they meet one hour a week and the schedule of the meeting is really really tight. All the members in the meeting should give a speech for 3~5 minutes without preparation. After that, peers will give advice about everyone's speech. In such a stressful situation, gradually people will improve their ability to deliver speech and forget nervous. I think right now, my listening has improved a lot but my spoken English still need a lot of practice. Therefore, toast master club is a good choice.

There are many people I admire in different fields. From business to computer science. Some person I admire demonstrate their talents when they are young. For example, Larry Page and Sergey Brin designed google during their PHD. Some others do not follow the 'orthordox' way.

The person I wanna introduce in this blog is Fred Cohen. In my opinion, he poses both characteristics mentioned above.

During the last two months, I read tons of papers in deception in cyber security. Gradually, I found that most papers in this area have cited Fred's paper. I start to research him and found something I admire.

Fred Cohen is an American computer scientist and best known as the inventor of computer virus defense techniques.

In 1983, while a student at the University of Southern California's School of Engineering (currently the Viterbi School of Engineering), he wrote a program for a parasitic application that seized control of computer operations, one of the first computer viruses, in Leonard Adleman's class.

One of the few solid theoretical results in the study of computer viruses is Cohen's 1987 demonstration that there is no algorithm that can perfectly detect all possible viruses
He has many other works related to computer viruses.

Although he has published many high quality papers, he does not devote him into academia. On the contrary, he owns his own company helping other companies solve security problems. In my former post I mentioned that I want to devote my findings to help others, not only be presented on the papers. This is easy to say but very hard to apply. But Fred succeeds. Besides business, he also publish books, design games for security trainings and some other interesting things all related to security. I really admire such life style that I can do so many things based on my interest.

From the first day I came to grad school, I know publication will be one of the most important things for me unlessI leave academia. Unfortunately, in my undergraduate study, I had rarely done any systematic research and I do not have any publication yet. However, I do want to publish my first paper as soon as possble. Thus my advisor and me are working hard toward this goal.

After huge amount of literature review in the past two months, I found the following venues that will be good place to publish papers in my area:

ACM CCS
ACM Conference on Computer and Communication Security. The annual ACM Computer and Communications Security Conference is a leading international forum for information security researchers, practitioners, developers, and users to explore cutting-edge ideas and results, and to exchange techniques, tools, and experiences.

This is a very important conference in my area. I have read several papers written by senior students published in CCS.

ACSAC
The Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC) is a premier security conference of outstanding tradition. Started in 1985, the conference has grown over the years to achieve worldwide attendance and recognition for the high quality of its presentations, discussions, and interactions.

This is another important conference in my area that a few researchers(my competitors!!!) who published same ideas of me in this conference.

HICSS
Since 1968 the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) has become a respected forum for the substantive interchange of ideas in all areas of information systems and technology.  HICSS is sponsored by the Shidler College of Business, University of Hawai'i at Manoa. 

This is another good venue to publish security papers. In addition to the quality of the conference, the location is another attractive point to me. ;-)

I hope I could join any one of the following communities asap.

1. CERT

CERT is an organization devoted to ensuring that appropriate technology and systems management practices are used to resist attacks on networked systems and to limiting damage and ensure continuity of critical services in spite of successful attacks, accidents, or failures.

CERT is located at the Software Engineering Institute (SEI), a federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) operated by Carnegie Mellon University.

CERT is the most famous community in my area. They have standardized all the vulnerabilites of cyber systems and it is very important to analyze the potential risk of one system or network.

2. SARMA
The Security Analysis and Risk Management Association (SARMA) is an all-volunteer, non-profit professional association serving those responsible for analyzing and managing security risks to systems, structures and operations from man-made threats. SARMA was created to provide a forum for the further development, standardization, and professionalization of the security analysis and risk management discipline. It is dedicated to providing leadership, education, and certification for security analysis and risk management professionals.

SARMA is not a particular computer science community since it also includes mechanical and other subjects that need risk management. However, risk management and analysis is similar in different areas thus it is not the excuse for not to join SARMA.

3. SIGSAC
The ACM Special Interest Group on Security, Audit and Control's mission is to develop the information security profession by sponsoring high-quality research conferences and workshops. SIGSAC conferences address all aspects of information and system security, encompassing security technologies, secure systems, security applications, and security policies. Security technologies include access control, assurance, authentication, cryptography, intrusion detection, penetration techniques, risk analysis, and secure protocols. Security systems include security in operating systems, database systems, networks and distributed systems, and middleware. Representative security applications areas are information systems, workflow systems, electronic commerce, electronic cash, copyright and intellectual property protection, telecommunications systems, and healthcare. Security polices encompass confidentiality, integrity, availability, privacy, and survivability policies, including tradeoff and conflicts amongst these.

ACM, the community that every scholar in computation area should join!!

4. SRA
The Society for Risk Analysis is a multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, scholarly, international society that provides an open forum for all those who are interested in risk analysis. Risk analysis is broadly defined to include risk assessment, risk characterization, risk communication, risk management, and policy relating to risk, in the context of risks of concern to individuals, to public and private sector organizations, and to society at a local, regional, national, or global level.

SRA is another big community dedicated for risk analysis that I wanna join.

This blog post is a little bit hard for me since I am the first and only student of Prof. McGill and we do not belong to any lab yet. Our research area is in cyber security but very different from the other professors' research area in IST.

Finally, I decided to talk with three senior students, one in Prof. Liu's lab, one in Prof.Chu's lab and the other in Prof. Wang's lab. The first student is doing research in intrusion detection which is also in cyber securty field. The second student's partial research interest is in RFID security and the last is doing data mining but I think he has a lot of ideas about the future.

All of them have attended conferences including CIT, IEEE Workshop on Information Security, CCS and so forth.

All of them have published papers, most in conferences and one student was once asked by one conference to be the chair of one section of the conference(I was suprised).

I am very interested in how they see  themselves academically. The first student think he likes his area and his area is more related to engineering so he wants to work in the industry after graduation. The second student wants to find a professor position in China, she prefers universities in Hongkong. And the last student also wants to find a professor position in China but he wants to work in a university near his hometown. We also talked a lot about the pros and cons of these choices. To be a professor in China is very different in USA, In China, professors are usually more related to engineering and they have more students. A phd from USA can obviously help us to find a professor position in one of the best universities in China. However, the academic environment, the graduate system especially for phd is not as good as USA.

For me, a first year phd student, I have not made up my mind yet. But maybe I'll work in the industry first as a consultant and I will come back to start my tenure if I get bored of industry. Is that possible?

The biggest difference between me and the other three students is that since I just finished by bachelar this year, my research interests are very broad and do not have a particular focus yet. However, the senior students all have narrowed down to a specific area and they know a lot about it.

As a brand new assistant professor who has just finished his Ph.D. from University of Maryland, professor McGill does not have a long CV with tons of publications. However, I dont think this is a disadvantage, On the contrary, I think that is an advantage.

As a new professor, I am the first student of professor McGill!! And right now, he has only one student. In database jargon, this is an 1:1 relationship. I like our cooperation now. Since I have a lot of opportunities to talk with my advisor about anything. From the research to course assignments, as well as graduate student life.

Professor McGill has publicated in the journal of Risk Analysis, Computers & Structures, Defense Modeling and Simulation, Natural Hazards Review, Bridge Engineering and so forth. Since I only have his publication in 2007 from his CV, this is only part of the data. But he is really productive, he published 13 papers in 2007. From this data, I can judge that he published most in journal of Risk Analysis.

The conferences professor McGill most attended are in the area of risk analysis, risk management and risk assessment.

Before coming to IST, professor McGill has worked in the Department of Defense as a research analyst. He was the 2003 fellow to the Department of Homeland Security. And before that he worked in Swales Aerospace Inc as a Structural Engineer.

Now in IST he develops and teaches undergraduate courses in risk management as part of the security risk analysis program.

If you are considering of applying IST, believe me, professor McGill is a good choice. His research is very new and exciting. And he is a good advisor both in academic and life. 

Everytime people ask me "Who is your advisor?", I know I have a tough time to go.
"My advisor is Professor McGill."
"Who?"
"Professor William McGill."
"Oh..Is he in CSE?"
"No, he is IST faculty."
"Oh really? Sorry, his name again?"
"Professor William McGill"
"What's his research area?"
"Damage assessment, risk analysis etc"
"What is damage assessment? "
"Blablablablabla"
"What is risk analysis?"
"Blablablablabla"

This kind of conversation happens almost everyday. Thanks to Professor Tapia that gives me this opportunity to officially introduce my advisor Professor William McGill grandly..

Actually, I came to know IST since my junior year because one of my schoolmates was admitted by IST. At that time, I had a superficial understanding of IST. I thought it i was like those MIS programs which focus more on management and business.
When I began to apply for graduate school, my point of view was completely changed, I started to think IST is equal to computer science departement since there are many professors that are doing technical research. However, these are all superficial understands untill I arrived at IST.

Fortunately, I did not have a advisor before I came to IST. So I have the chance to talk with several professors in IST who are in different areas including HCI, Information Retrival and security. And I met some other professors during orientation and classes. I felt that IST is very diverse, although there is no deparment here, the research areas really went into different  directions. I believe this is the result of not having departments because a flat structure can help people have more interaction and cooperation. I start to love IST. I have mentioned that I am interested in many many areas. I know, as a Ph.D. student, depth of study is more important than broadth. But I am really happy to taste different areas. My advisor and me are working in the area of security, I am taking the course in HCI, and in other courses, I learned about social network, information retrieval, and so forth. Now nobody can say I am a technical guy anymore since I am learning so much things.

Back to the theme. If IST continure to keeping this structure without department, how it should be structured? I think the research tracks for graduate study are very good and flexible. However, for undergrad students, since they do not know what they want, we should have a advisor or tutor program for them. Say, a student can talk with the advisor or tutor once  a week about their study. The advisor and the tutor can tell the student the related topics of any track. Gradully, the student will have feeling in one or more tracks and he/she can become more focus on these areas. During my undergrad study, my college also have a lot of tracks, like enterprise computing, mainfram, embeded system and so forth. However, there was no such advisor or tutor program and I have no idea about these areas. The result is that I took many courses which I was not interested and wasted much time that I could have spent on my interesting areas.

Where do I fit into IST?
Well, I have mentioned that the broadth of research in IST really attracts me. However, among all of these areas, I am interested in security in most. Now I am working with Prof. Mcgill within the area of risk analysis and damage assessment. This is a quite new area and there are not many papers now, which is a great chance for us. What's more, I believe this study is also very useful and highly demanded in China.
In addition to study, in IST there are a lot of Chinese students and we seem to form a network that help each others. This also can help me cure my homesick. =)

All in all, we are Penn State, we are IST!!