IT & SYSTEMS IMPROVEMENT: CSE Alumni Developing Management Software for AUA
CSE alumni Arthur Asadoorian (CIS ’10) and Lina Hovhanessian (CIS ’10) are working with the AUA Registrar’s Office to develop the first University Management System (UMS) in Armenia. UMS is an integrated computer platform that automates university work flows, including recruitment, application processing, student grading, student transcripts, human-resource management, and so on. “The system creates databases and allows for multiple users from different locations in the university to input and generate reports simultaneously,” explains Mr. Asadoorian. Currently for a college dean to obtain information about a student or to receive a list of students enrolled in a course, s/he would have to ask one designated person at the Registrar’s office to generate the reports. Demand for such reports is great, placing great strain on the limited resources of the Registrar’s office. “UMS is the platform universities use to deal with large scale work flow and reduce human error,” explains AUA Registrar Rebecca Carter. Workload is expected to grow significantly as AUA introduces its undergraduate program in 2013. “This UMS is not a minute too early in helping us prepare for this growth,” says Ms. Carter. The software co-developer Ms. Lina Hovhanessian adds, “With this growth in mind, we’ve designed the platform to be scalable, robust, secure, and user-friendly.” Currently, the team is preparing to migrate the data from the old systems into the UMS, a process that is expected to take six months. The UMS has been two years in the making. The first year of the project included key contributions from two additional alumni, Saro Der Avanessian (CIS ’07) and Rafael Avetyan (CIS ’11).
COMPUTER & INFORMATION SYSTEMS: Faculty and Alumni Present Papers on Artificial Intelligence and Software Engineering
CSE Assistant Professor Suren Khachatryan, in cooperation with CSE alumni, presented two papers at the 8th International Conference on Computer Science and Information Technologies. The Conference was held in Yerevan, Armenia in late September 2011. The first paper, “Interacting Particles Model of Go Game” written by Dr. Khachatryan, Sargis Sargsyan (CIS ’09), and Arthur Hayrapetyan (CIS ’09), is related to the field of artificial intelligence. It considers the game of Go as an example of a computationally intensive game and models the pieces as electrically charged particles. It then investigates the interaction between these particles, suggesting reasonable moves. The second paper, called “Interacting Particles Method of Recognition of Software Module Clusters” written by Dr. Khachatryan, Sahar Mojtahedi (CIS ’10), and Aram Petrosyan (CIS ’09), is related to the field of software engineering and addresses the problem of the decomposition of software systems into clusters of similar modules.
CRYPTOGRAPHY: Verium—CIS students develop product safety solution
Counterfeiting drugs, medical products, food, alcohol and the like is a global problem. A group of AUA CIS students are developing an authentication and verification system called Verium that uses cryptographic solutions to combat counterfeiting and identity theft. The system consists of a pair of public and secret key assigned to a product. A centralized system deployed in the computing cloud environment is used to authenticate products. The Verium system enables direct communication between consumers and manufacturers. Along with authentication of products, the system can also offer useful information about expiration dates, batch numbers, and so on. The team is currently piloting their system with a major food and beverage manufacturer in Armenia. For demonstration of the product, its features and applications contact Gurgen Hakobyan (CIS ’12) at hakobyan@me.com.
CYBER SECURITY: Security of Samsung Corporation Video Devices Developed at ERC
An ERC team is about to complete security solutions for Samsung Corporation of South Korea. The Principle Investigator (PI), Dr. Gurgen Khachaturyan, is developing an algorithm to be used in many Samsung video devices to protect against hacker attempts to place viruses and other unauthorized information onto devices and remain undetected. The project is developing a fast and secure integrity checking solution. Dr. Khachaturyan’s research team includes Melsik Kuregian (senior researcher), Sergey Abrahamyan (research associate), Aram Jivanyan (research associate), Sergey Sargsyan (research associate, CIS ‘12), and Hovag Abramian (research associate, CIS ‘13).
CYBER SECURITY: Cutting-edge cryptography research funded by the Volkswagen Foundation
ERC, in collaboration with Dr.Han Vinck of the University of Essen in Germany, has secured a two-year contract from the Volkswagen Foundation in the field of error-control coding and cryptography. The project will engage talented students and provide them with the opportunity to connect with leading scientists in the field. The research project, led by AUA’s Dr. Gurgen Khachatryan, will focus on biometric verification, technology that will enhance digital security and authentication. This leading technology is in great demand in the face of increasing threats of hackers, identity-theft, and other digital crime.
CYBER SECURITY: NTX Biometic Password
Dr. Gurgen Khatchatryan with a team of AUA students completed a Java code for user-client secure authentication for the French company NTX. The team is now working on a second phase the project that will use the cryptographic Hash algorithm called Erindale+ to develop further security solutions for NTX.