Georgia Tech News | The Contracting Education Academy

September 6, 2018 By cs

10 tips to help you succeed as an adult learner

Adult learning is no walk in the park. Going back to a formal learning environment can be daunting for working professionals even if they’re top achievers in their jobs.

At Georgia Tech Professional Education (GTPE), we support adult learners as they build their expertise to pursue their career goals. Our staff are adept at serving the needs of adult learners because they understand their challenges – they’re lifelong learners themselves.

Here are the top tips from GTPE staff based on their personal experiences as adult learners.

1. Choose the Right Learning Opportunity

Your time is valuable, so it’s essential that the program you choose is worth your while. Chris Walker, assistant director of marketing, found that deciding whether training would truly benefit him to be one of his primary concerns. He advises conducting research before committing to a program of study. ”See if the school you’re interested in will provide contacts to their graduates who can offer references,” he suggested. “It’s so important to know if you’ll get a return on investment before you make your decision.”

Brenda Sanders, graphic designer, mentioned other ways to research potential programs. “I went online to see the reviews from other students about what they learned and how they felt about the assignments and instructors,” she said. Getting recommendations from friends and colleagues is also an effective way find out if a program will be a fit for you.

2. Prioritize Your Learning

Balancing work, life, and learning is always a concern for working professionals. And for Najla Lewis, marketing manager, it was no different. “One of my top challenges was managing my responsibilities – work, family, and homework,” she said. She overcame this obstacle by completing as many tasks as possible before her course started. During the course, she tried to make use of short bursts of free time to minimize her workload in the office, such as answering emails during her lunch breaks and in the evenings. Her advice to others is to prioritize learning. “Plan to make short-term adjustments to your life pattern because they will benefit you in the future,” she said.

Lindsey Laney, academic program manager, found that she needed a dedicated learning space when she worked on her second master’s degree. “I knew I needed a quiet space to work, so I transitioned our guest bedroom into an office dedicated to school,” she said. “I had a dedicated school computer, school desk, and an understanding that when the door was closed, I was working on school and couldn’t interact at that time.”

Fatimah Wirth, instructional designer, pointed out another aspect of planning ahead: reviewing the syllabus and course structure. “If you’re taking an online course, make sure to set aside enough time to watch lecture videos, complete assignments, projects, quizzes, or exams and take part in discussions,” she said. “If you’re taking face-to-face classes, allow enough time to attend classes and complete assignments or projects outside of class time. Take into account travel time and travel conditions.”

For Patrice Miles, assistant dean of business operations, prioritizing her learning also means being fully engaged during class. ”I focused on being ‘in the moment’ and avoiding distractions when I was in class,” she said. “The phone stayed in my purse!”

3. Don’t Let the Big Picture Overwhelm You

Laura Haynes, assistant director of operations, experienced three major life events while working on her doctorate. She got married, had a baby, and suffered the loss of her father. She also had a full-time university teaching position during this time. It’s no wonder she considered abandoning her studies. However, one comment gave her the will to keep going. “I shared my thoughts with one of my mentors, who was a university president. He advised that I would ‘never regret completing a Ph.D. program.’ I credit his simple remark with compelling me to persist and complete the degree,” she said.

Her recommendation to other adult learners is based on her mother’s advice to focus on the manageable tasks at hand and take one day at a time. “Take bite-sized morsels of study digested daily to avoid choking on the potentially overwhelming number of assignments required to complete each course,” she said. “I highly recommend this approach, without which I may have become overwhelmed and disengaged.”

4. Believe in Yourself

Georgia Tech is known for its rigor and the strength of it STEM programs. This reputation can lead working professionals in non-technical fields to wonder is they are able to succeed in our programs. Najla Lewis, marketing manager, found herself questioning if she would be able to manage the rigor of a course at GTPE and whether she would be a fit for a project management program with her non-technical background. “Even though many of our learners are from technical fields, there are also learning opportunities for people in non-technical fields,” she discovered. “I found that the project management certificate program had a good mix of adult learners from all industries, career levels, and disciplines. I fit in well and was able to lend my individual talents to the group activities and discussions.” Her advice to others is to believe in themselves.

5. Focus on Long-term Benefits Not Short-term Obstacles

Chris Walker, assistant director of marketing, considers taking time off work for professional education to be a key challenge. Being out of the office to take a course means that the work piles up while you’re away. Rather than focusing on the consequences of missing work, Walker suggests keeping your long-term goals in mind. “Try to focus on the value of the long-term benefits of training versus the short-term inconvenience of taking time off work and having to play catch up,” he suggested.

6. Don’t Let Technology Get You Down

Technology plays a major part in our lives, so make sure it works to your advantage when you’re learning. Edith Greenwood, producer of interactive instructional media, raised the issue of technical needs. “Take care of any technical requirements related to the class before it starts,” she said. “Trust me, this will make assignment completion less frustrating.”

Lindsey Laney, academic program manager, pointed out the importance of contingency plans related to technology. “I planned for ‘what if’ scenarios such as what if the Internet goes down? What if my computer stops working? Are my documents saved on a cloud so I can access them from any computer?”

7. Know How You Learn Best

From online programs to traditional face-to-face classes, today’s adult learners have many options to choose from when it comes to professional education. Each delivery method has its advantages. Online learning offers optimal flexibility and the opportunity for online collaboration with peers outside your area. Traditional classes provide the face-to-face contact with your instructor and classmates. Hybrid programs offer a combination of online and face-to-face learning.

Brenda Sanders, graphic designer, suggests considering which option offers you the best chance of success before you choose a program. “Figure out which classes work best for your lifestyle and for the way you learn,” she said. Some people need to be in a classroom, but more and more people are turning to online learning.”

8. Don’t Be Afraid to Ask Questions

Jay Boudreaux, course management coordinator, noted that adult learners need to be patient with their learning. “Ask questions when you need help with understanding content,” he said.

Whether you take an online or a face-to-face class, take advantage of the opporutnities to interact with instructors and classmates to enhance your learning. Fatimah Wirth, instructional designer, suggested, ”Be comfortable with seeking help by asking questions in a face-to-face class or in discussions if you’re in an online class. Be sure to attend office hours, face-to-face or online, to seek clarification or answers to questions you may have.”

9. Revisit What You’ve Learned and Apply It

Having taken mainly traditional, face-to-face classes, Bobby Strickland, graphic designer, found he needed to adjust to online learning. “I learn better in a classroom, so learning online was a challenge. I needed to repeat sessions to make sure I understood the content,” he said. “Taking written notes helped me retain the online content and made it feel more like a classroom. I tried to implement the content into my work projects as soon as possible so that I had a better chance at retaining it.”

Strickland’s advice to other adult learners new to online learning is not to be hard on themselves. “Be patient with yourself. If it’s been a while since you were in a learning environment, know that the pace has escalated,“ he said.

10. Explore Your Financial Options

The cost of professional education is often a concern for working adults. When Najla Lewis, marketing manager, decided to take the project management certificate program at GTPE, she explored the financial options available to her. GTPE, along with many employers, is generous when it comes to contributing to employees’ professional education, so always check with your employer if funding is available to you. Lewis also took advantage of a discount by committing to the entire certificate program rather than taking only some individual courses. “I also spaced courses out over two fiscal years so that I could take advantage of the educational support from my employer,” she said.

Massive open online courses or MOOCS are growing in popularity. Offered by the world’s top universities, they are free to everyone from anywhere. MOOCs are a convenient, affordable way to keep learning. They’re also a useful, low-risk way to test the waters before you decide to invest in professional education on a specific topic or to ease back into formal learning if you’ve had a long break from it.

To enroll in one of Georgia Tech’s many MOOCs, please browse the available courses on our partner platforms, Coursera and edX:

Lifelong Learning Is Worth It

Balancing work, life, and family while pursuing professional education can be a challenge, but you can overcome it. And the long-term benefits far outweigh the short-term inconveniences.

“Professional education allows me to be more effective and relevant in my role, and to set an example for my team about the importance of education for a lifetime,” said Patrice Miles, assistant dean of business operations. “I also find the networking with others in the program to be so valuable as we continue the learning outside of the classroom.”

You’ll never regret deepening your knowledge, sharpening your skills, and and building a professional network. Ongoing professional education makes it possible.

Source: https://pe.gatech.edu/blog/10-tips-help-you-succeed-adult-learner

See all of Georgia Tech’s professional education contracting courses at: https://contractingacademy.gatech.edu/training/

August 17, 2018 By cs

Georgia Tech researchers help close security hole in popular encryption software

Cybersecurity researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have helped close a security vulnerability that could have allowed hackers to steal encryption keys from a popular security package by briefly listening in on unintended “side channel” signals from smartphones.

The attack, which was reported to software developers before it was publicized, took advantage of programming that was, ironically, designed to provide better security. The attack used intercepted electromagnetic signals from the phones that could have been analyzed using a small portable device costing less than a thousand dollars. Unlike earlier intercept attempts that required analyzing many logins, the “One & Done” attack was carried out by eavesdropping on just one decryption cycle.

“This is something that could be done at an airport to steal people’s information without arousing suspicion and makes the so-called ‘coffee shop attack’ much more realistic,” said Milos Prvulovic, associate chair of Georgia Tech’s School of Computer Science. “The designers of encryption software now have another issue that they need to take into account because continuous snooping over long periods of time would no longer be required to steal this information.”

The side channel attack is believed to be the first to retrieve the secret exponent of an encryption key in a modern version of OpenSSL without relying on the cache organization and/or timing. OpenSSL is a popular encryption program used for secure interactions on websites and for signature authentication. The attack showed that a single recording of a cryptography key trace was sufficient to break 2048 bits of a private RSA key.

Results of the research, which was supported in part by the National Science Foundation, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) will be presented at the 27th USENIX Security Symposium August 16th in Baltimore.

After successfully attacking the phones and an embedded system board – which all used ARM processors – the researchers proposed a fix for the vulnerability, which was adopted in versions of the software made available in May.

Side channel attacks extract sensitive information from signals created by electronic activity within computing devices during normal operation. The signals include electromagnetic emanations created by current flows within the devices computational and power-delivery circuitry, variation in power consumption, and also sound, temperature and chassis potential variation. These emanations are very different from communications signals the devices are designed to produce.

In their demonstration, Prvulovic and collaborator Alenka Zajic listened in on two different Android phones using probes located near, but not touching the devices. In a real attack, signals could be received from phones or other mobile devices by antennas located beneath tables or hidden in nearby furniture.

The “One & Done” attack analyzed signals in a relatively narrow (40 MHz wide) band around the phones’ processor clock frequencies, which are close to 1 GHz (1,000 MHz). The researchers took advantage of a uniformity in programming that had been designed to overcome earlier vulnerabilities involving variations in how the programs operate.

“Any variation is essentially leaking information about what the program is doing, but the constancy allowed us to pinpoint where we needed to look,” said Prvulovic. “Once we got the attack to work, we were able to suggest a fix for it fairly quickly. Programmers need to understand that portions of the code that are working on secret bits need to be written in a very particular way to avoid having them leak.”

The researchers are now looking at other software that may have similar vulnerabilities, and expect to develop a program that would allow automated analysis of security vulnerabilities.

“Our goal is to automate this process so it can be used on any code,” said Zajic, an associate professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “We’d like to be able to identify portions of code that could be leaky and require a fix. Right now, finding these portions requires considerable expertise and manual examination.”

Side channel attacks are still relatively rare, but Prvulovic says the success of “One & Done” demonstrates an unexpected vulnerability. The availability of low-cost signal processing devices small enough to use in coffee shops or airports could make the attacks more practical.

“We now have relatively cheap and compact devices – smaller than a USB drive – that are capable of analyzing these signals,” said Prvulovic. “Ten years ago, the analysis of this signal would have taken days. Now it takes just seconds, and can be done anywhere – not just in a lab setting.”

Producers of mobile devices are becoming more aware of the need to protect electromagnetic signals of phones, tablets and laptops from interception by shielding their side channel emissions. Improving the software running on the devices is also important, but Prvulovic suggests that users of mobile devices must also play a security role.

“This is something that needs to be addressed at all levels,” he said. “A combination of factors – better hardware, better software and cautious computer hygiene – make you safer. You should not be paranoid about using your devices in public locations, but you should be cautious about accessing banking systems or plugging your device into unprotected USB chargers.”

In addition to those already mentioned, the research involved Monjur M. Alam, Haider A. Khan, Moumita Dey, Nishith Sinha and Robert Callen, all of Georgia Tech.

This work has been supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation under grant 1563991 and by the Air Force Research Laboratory and DARPA LADS under contract FA8650-16-C-7620. The views and findings in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official views of NSF, DARPA or the AFRL.

Source: https://www.news.gatech.edu/2018/08/09/researchers-help-close-security-hole-popular-encryption-software

August 3, 2018 By cs

Georgia Tech receives $1.6 million for nuclear energy projects

The Department of Energy (DOE) recently awarded the Georgia Institute of Technology $1.6 million in two grants for testing materials used in producing nuclear energy.

DOE is awarding $47 million through its Nuclear Energy University Program (NEUP) to support 63 university-led nuclear energy research and development projects in 29 states. NEUP seeks to maintain U.S. leadership in nuclear research across the country by providing top science and engineering faculty and their students opportunities to develop innovative technologies and solutions for civil nuclear capabilities.

“Because nuclear energy is such a vital part of our nation’s energy portfolio, these investments are necessary to ensuring that future generations of Americans will continue to benefit from safe, clean, reliable, and resilient nuclear energy,” said Ed McGinnis, DOE’s principal deputy assistant secretary for nuclear energy. “Our commitment to providing researchers with access to the fundamental infrastructure and capabilities needed to develop advanced nuclear technologies is critical.”

The awards are dispersed under three DOE nuclear energy programs: the Nuclear Energy University Program (NEUP), the Nuclear Energy Enabling Technologies (NEET) program, and the Nuclear Science User Facilities (NSUF) program.

Georgia Tech’s projects are funded by the NEUP. The first is for corrosion testing of new alloys and accompanying on-line reduction oxidation measurements in the flow loops of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) eutectic alkaline metal fluoride salt mixture, specifically the molten salts lithium fluoride, sodium fluoride, and potassium fluoride (also called FLiNaK) as well as lithium fluoride and beryllium fluoride (or FLiBe.)

“The structural alloys in fluoride salt-cooled high-temperature reactors (FHR) will be exposed to molten fluoride salt mixtures at high temperatures, which can be very corrosive depending on the alloy composition and the presence of impurities in the molten salt. It is very important to test the candidate alloys under potential FHR conditions and understand the corrosion mechanisms in order to select the right alloys to use in building the structure of a reactor,” said Preet M. Singh, principal investigator on the project from Georgia Tech’s School of Materials Science and Engineering.

In the second project, a modeling and simulation tool will be developed to perform highly accurate and efficient transient calculations in the FHRs.

“Accurate and efficient modeling and simulation tools are needed to support design optimization, analysis, licensing, and eventual deployment of any reactor,” said Farzad Rahnema, the project’s principal investigator and Georgia Power Company Distinguished Professor of Nuclear Engineering in Georgia Tech’s George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. “The current tools are inadequate for modeling advanced reactors such as the FHRs because of their complex geometry and high heterogeneity. The capability to perform transient calculations with high fidelity is an important component of licensing first-of-a-kind reactors, where experimental data are lacking or scarce.”

The DOE awards are for three years.

Learn more at the DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy website.

Source: http://www.news.gatech.edu/2018/07/12/georgia-tech-receives-16-million-nuclear-energy-projects

July 9, 2018 By cs

Georgia Tech team receives DARPA grant to apply neuroscience to machine learning

Siri knows where you live, but she couldn’t drive you there.

Despite their name, artificial neural networks are very different from the brain. Yet machine learning performance could be improved if informed by state-of-the-art neuroscience.

A team of researchers from Georgia Tech and other local universities would study this problem with a grant up to $2 million, dependent on successful completion of milestones, from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Lifelong Learning Machines (L2M) program managed by Dr. Hava Siegelmann. DARPA’s goal would be to develop new machine learning approaches that enable systems to learn continually while they operate and apply prior knowledge to new situations.

School of Computer Science Professor Constantine Dovrolis, Georgia Tech Research Institute Senior Research Scientist Zsolt Kira, Georgia State University neuroscience Professor Sarah Pallas, and Emory biology Associate Professor Astrid Prinz are collaborating on the two-year project.

Bringing Neural Networks to the 21st Century

The concept of modeling a computational neural network based on the brain first arose in the 1950s, but it hasn’t evolved much since.

“Obviously, since the ‘50s there’s been a lot of progress in neuroscience, but not a lot of it has translated to machine learning,” Kira said. “Supervised machine learning through neural networks is fundamentally a computer scientist’s translation of a high-level understanding of the brain from the past. But I think there’s a lot we can learn from contemporary neuroscience.”

One of the fundamental problems of machine learning that neuroscience could alleviate is what Dovrolis calls “catastrophic forgetting.” When the artificial neural network learns a new task, it often forgets the previous one.

“Deep learning networks are very different from the brain, both in terms of structure (architecture) and function (dynamics),” Dovrolis said.

Take the brain of a baby. Within the first few years of life, it not only has the ability to learn but also to generalize with very little supervision. Dovrolis believes that machine learning can achieve the same goal but only through a major departure from the currently established machine learning paradigms.

“The brain is really the only example of general intelligence we have,” Dovrolis said. “It makes sense to take that example, identify its fundamental principles, and transfer them to the computational domain.”

Bridging the Gap between Neuro and Computer Science

It may make sense, but it’s also controversial. Many computer scientists see the brain as mere hardware, and they prefer to focus instead on more statistical machine learning approaches. This is why this project is so unique: It brings together different ideas from network science, machine learning, evolutionary computing, computational neuroscience, and systems neuroscience — fields that should’ve been working together from the start.

“It’s easier for each field to work by themselves because it’s very comfortable,” Kira said. “But there’s a lot of potential if you actually make the effort to bring people together.”

Yet working with neuroscientists doesn’t just benefit computer scientists. Many neuroscientists believe computing could help with better modeling of biological networks, and ultimately, a deeper understanding of how the brain works.

“Neuroscience can, in turn, be guided by results from machine learning research that can inform new experiments to deepen our understanding of the brain,” Prinz said.

One of these examples is the flexibility of the brain.

“Neural circuits in the developing brain are highly flexible and adaptable to environmental changes, which endows them with an ability to learn rapidly and to self-repair after damage,” Pallas said.

Adult brains are much less plastic, so one of the neuroscientists’ goals is to uncover the neuronal mechanism that regulates the level of plasticity versus stability in brain circuits. With this, they can harness the mechanism for medical purposes and design machines that can continue learning without forgetting.

Approaching the Research

The project should attempt to address five goals of the L2M program:

• Continual learning: The building block of the cortex is a largely invariant structure referred to as a “cortical column.” The function of cortical columns is not known yet, but it seems that they act as associative memories and predictors. The structure of cortical columns suggests that recurrent neural networks could learn incrementally and in an unsupervised manner simply by interacting with the environment.

• Adaptation to new tasks/environments: These cortical columns could interconnect through deep brain-wide hierarchies and nested feedback loops that interact and inform each other, enabling the brain to adapt to different environments with minimal need for retraining.

• Goal-driven perception: At any time, the brain is receiving data from many sensory sources. Hierarchical neural networks could use task-driven inputs to adjust low-level sensory processing and integration dynamically, depending on top-down goal-related signals.

• Selective plasticity: The project should be investigating how the connections and weights between (artificial) neurons could be adjusted when a new task is encountered, without catastrophically forgetting previous tasks. Neuromodulator-driven plasticity and homeostatic plasticity are two biological mechanisms that could be transferred in machine learning to address this problem.

• Monitoring and safety: Researchers would also investigate how to ensure stability and safety, based on the organization of the brain’s autonomic nervous system. Additionally, the safety concern could be further addressed through an “artificial impulse control” system, operating on the same prediction principles as the corresponding cortical system.

This research could allow machine learning to become increasingly adaptive and continually learn, which could have vast applications. A self-driving car could be programmed in the summer, but with these principles, it could learn how to drive in previously untested winter conditions. Siri could be next.

Source: https://www.gtri.gatech.edu/newsroom/georgia-tech-team-receives-darpa-grant-apply-neuroscience-machine-learning

June 18, 2018 By cs

FBI: Reset your router or face Russian malware

It’s not every day that the Federal Bureau of Investigation gives you an order.

On May 25 the FBI asked members of the public to turn off and turn back on their routers because of the spread of malware called “VPNFilter” created and distributed by the Russian hacker network Sofacy.

Georgia Tech Senior Research Scientist Charles “Chaz” Lever explained the damage this malware can do:

“This malware will affect the average user by using one of the capabilities in the malware to passively collect traffic. This can be used to harvest banking credentials or other sensitive password information that is going over the home network. Additionally, your home network could be hijacked to be part of an attack on a remote entity, masking the identity of the original user and potentially putting you in the crosshairs of law enforcement.”

In addition to just a simple reboot, Lever recommended following the manufacturer’s instructions on resetting the software in the device, also known as “firmware.”

Source: http://www.news.gatech.edu/2018/06/06/fbi-reset-your-router-or-face-russian-malware

Learn more about cybersecurity research at Georgia Tech by visiting the Institute for Information Security and Privacy.

Watch a YouTube video on this subject by clicking on the image below: