Computer Science Funding Skyrockets

Faculty members in the Department of Computer Science continue to expand extramural funding, leading to new advances in research, enhanced educational opportunities for students, better-skilled graduates for industry jobs, and entrepreneurial spinoffs for researchers.

The more than $8 million faculty members earned in research awards the latter part of 2011 from government agencies, industry and other education institutions recognizes the quality and potential of computer science faculty members. This follows on the heels of a very successful 2010 - 2011 academic year when computer science faculty members received more than $12 million in new extramural funding.

“We've taken an aggressive approach to increase funding and initiated more high-profile projects,” said Gopal Gupta, department head and professor of computer science. “It's paying off, bringing national and international visibility.”
Of the more than 25 grants received during this period, nearly a dozen were from the National Science Foundation for projects that range from conducting basic research in improving the dependability of multi-threaded programs to developing software to predict a virus.

Other governmental funding sources include the Army Research Office, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Department of Homeland Security. And Raytheon Co. is providing funding for two grants.

The dramatic increase in research funding the last two years is the result of the dedication of computer science faculty members in a strategically structured department, said Gupta, holder of the Erik Jonsson Chair.

“Last fall the Department of Computer Science hired only three new computer science faculty members after a gap of nearly five years,” he said. “The innovative research being done by our faculty members is receiving the support and attention it deserves.”

Computer Science Research Funding in Academic Year 2011 - 2012

EAGER: Joint Learning for Knowledge-Rich Conference Resolution
Vincent Ng
National Science Foundation, $130,000

Extraction and Categorization of Opinions from Social Posts Over Time
Vincent Ng
Raytheon, $100,000

CAREER: Language-based Security for Polymorphic Malware Protection
Kevin Hamlen
National Science Foundation, $504,000

Securing Web Advertisements: Fixing the Short-Term Crisis and Addressing Long-Term Challenges
Kevin Hamlen
National Science Foundation, $527,000

Hyperflow: A Hybrid IP/Optical Flow Network Architecture
Miguel Razo, Andrea Fumagalli and Marco Tacca
National Science Foundation, $560,000

MRI Consortium: Development of Instrumentation for Measuring the Dependability and
Quality of Cloud Computing Systems
I-Ling Yen, Farokh Bastani, Gopal Gupta
National Science Foundation, $490,000

Collaborative Research: FRP: QoS-Assured Service Composition and Execution
I-Ling Yen
National Science Foundation, $100,000

NSF Corbi: Risk Analysis-Based Fault Proneness Identification for Multi-Threaded Embedded Software
W. Eric Wong
National Science Foundation, $30,000

Malicious Behavior Pattern Extrapolation
Latifur Khan
Raytheon, $100,000

Reactively Adaptive Malware: Attacks and Defenses
Latifur Khan
Homeland Protection Institute, $182,000

Capacity Building for Assured Cloud Computing
Bhavani Thuraisingham
National Science Foundation, $265,000

Improving Dependability of Multithreaded Distributed Programs
Neeraj Mittal
National Science Foundation: $224,000

Safe, Reuse-Oriented Reverse Engineering of Functional Components from x86 Binaries
Zhiqiang Lin
DARPA, $475,000

Scaling up Inference in Markov Logic
Vibhav Gogate
Army Research Office, $147,000

QuEST: Telecom Systems Performance Metrics Comparison
E. Douglas Harris
QuEST Forum, $741,000

Development of a Chemically Hazardous Substances Information Repository
E. Douglas Harris
Department of Homeland Security, $899,000

DoD Information Assurance Scholarship Program
Kamil Sarac
Department of Defense, $74,000

Secure Storage, Processing and Sharing of Data in Private Clouds
Murat Kantarcioglu
Air Force Office of Scientific Research, $448,000

THUnderBOLT: Toward Human-like Understanding in Breakthrough Operational Language Technologies
Yang Liu
DARPA: $520,000

Natural Language Processing to Extract Actionable Findings from Radiology Reports
Sanda Harabagiu
UT Southwestern/National Institutes of Health, $37,000

Privacy-Enhanced Secure Data Provenance
Murat Kantarcioglu, Bhavani Thuraisingham, Alain Bensoussan
National Science Foundation, $912,000

REU Site: Software Safety: Methodology, Practice and Research
Eric Wong, Sook Kim
National Science Foundation, $350,000

CAREER: Spectral Deformable Models: Theory and Applications
Xiaohu Guo
National Science Foundation, $432,000

Spectral Deformable Models: Theory and Applications (REU Supplement)
Xiaohu Guo
National Science Foundation, $16,000

Personalized Adaptive Radioactive Therapy
Xiaohu Guo
UT Southwestern Medical Center, $334,000

I/UC Research Center: Risk Analysis-Based Fault-Proneness Identification for Multi-Threaded
Embedded Software, Net-Centric Software and Systems Center
Eric Wong
The University of North Texas, $15,000

TC: Large: Collaborative Research: Privacy-Enhanced Secure Data Provenance
Murat Kantarcioglu
National Science Foundation, $177,000

Travel Grant for International Symposium on Spatial and Temporal Databases (SSTD), 2011
Latifur Khan
National Science Foundation, $20,000