New York Tech Welcomes Students to 2021 NSF REU Program

On June 1, New York Tech’s Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program welcomed 14 members to its summer 2021 cohort. The prestigious 10-week virtual program, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), provides opportunities for talented undergraduate students from around the country to collaborate with New York Tech faculty and graduate students on the research and development of methods of securing mobile devices and wireless networks using software and hardware approaches.

This year’s REU, under the supervision of Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering N. Sertac Artan, Ph.D., includes 10 visiting students from the University of South Carolina, Bucknell, Rochester Institute of Technology, Indiana University, Wesleyan University, and other U.S. universities. The other four students are New York Tech students who are part of the NSF’s S-STEM program: computer science majors Guang Too and Muhammad Rashid, and electrical and computer engineering majors Luna Ferraro and Michael Aquino.

All REU participants will have virtual access to the university’s state-of-the-art research facilities, faculty experts and gain valuable research experience simulating malware and attacks on mobile devices and wireless networks, evaluating the efficacy of online toxic comment detectors, developing efficient privacy-preserving authentication methods with novel biometrics for smartphones, analyzing emotions of populations vulnerable to phishing, and secure sharing of wireless spectrum for body-area networks and connected vehicles.

The program will culminate with student research presentations to be held via Zoom.