How Fitbits, Other Bluetooth Devices Make Us Vulnerable to Tracking
BU researchers found that a third-party algorithm can track the location of some Bluetooth devices In 2018, nearly 3.7 billion new Bluetooth-enabled devices shipped worldwide to consumers. From phones and speakers to thermostats and fridges, home appliances and personal devices including “wearables” are rapidly becoming more connected by Wi-Fi than ever before, creating what’s called […]
Know What’s Good for Your Health? Artificial Intelligence
Every day, it becomes a little harder to find a corner of healthcare not being touched in some fundamental way by data analytics. That Fitbit on your wrist may soon send your resting heart rate to Google, where it would join the electronic health records of millions of others, and where algorithms could yield comprehensive […]
Can Technology Eliminate Blind Spots?
New digital-camera-based system shows it’s possible to “see” around corners What if your car possessed technology that warned you not only about objects in clear view of your vehicle—the way that cameras, radar, and laser can do now in many standard and autonomous vehicles—but also warned you about objects hidden by obstructions. Maybe it’s something […]
New papers by CISE Faculty & Students Featured in Proceedings of the IEEE Special Issue on Smart Cities
Recent UN projections show explosive growth in the urban population, doubling worldwide by 2050. It is clear that cities are on the cusp of disruptive changes. From smart phones and wearable technologies to self-driving cars, navigation apps, and drones, new smart devices that connect people, places and things are being invented every day, radically changing […]
New Study Offers Hope for Urban Commuters
A new paper by faculty and student researchers from BU Center for Information & Systems Engineering could dramatically ease commuter frustration. Frustration. Rage. Anxiety. These are just some of the adjectives people use to describe their emotional state when driving the streets of Boston, the sixth-most-gridlock-plagued urban area in the country, according to a WBUR survey. Boston is not alone in […]
NSF, CISE Look to the Future of Smart Healthcare at Campus Workshop
By Sara Cody As the National Science Foundation looks to the future of science in smart and connected health, the agency partnered with the Center for Information and Systems Engineering to convene a gathering of principal investigators and other research leaders on the BU campus this month. The interdisciplinary researchers discussed their progress and identified […]
A Point of Light
Vivek Goyal Creates Images from Single Photons When you take a photo on a cloudy day with your average digital camera, the sensor detects trillions of photons. Photons, the elementary particles of light, strike different parts of the sensor in different quantities to form an image, with the standard four-by-six-inch photo boasting 1,200-by-1,800 pixels. Anyone […]
Interdisciplinary Team Sheds Light on How Proteins Bind
Finding Could Open Up New Drug Discovery Opportunities Over the past six years, an interdisciplinary team of College of Engineering faculty members—Professor Sandor Vajda (BME, SE), Research Assistant Professor Dima Kozakov (BME), Professor Yannis Paschalidis (ECE, SE) and Associate Professor Pirooz Vakili (ME, SE)—have been developing a set of powerful optimization algorithms for predicting the structures of complexes that form when […]
Sensor Research Wins $1M NSF Award
Enhancing the functionality of cyber-physical systems—those that integrate physical processes with networked computing—could significantly improve our quality of life, from reducing car collisions to upgrading robotic surgeries to mounting more effective search and rescue missions. Recognizing Boston University as a key contributor to this effort, the National Science Foundation has awarded Professors Venkatesh Saligrama (ECE, SE) […]
Opening Movements: Your next security ID may be a defining gesture
To the casual passerby, Janusz Konrad seems a bit fanatical about tai chi: standing in his office, waving one arm to and fro, then spreading both arms and bringing them together. Duck inside, however, and you’ll notice he’s not stretching for his health; he’s stretching for a camera, and images on a computer monitor are […]